No effect of novel exploration on the consolidation of extinction learning in human context conditioning

Animal research show that a novel exploration task performed shortly before a learning episode can strengthen hippocampal memory consolidation through behavioural tagging mechanisms. The aim of the present study was to conceptually translate behavioural tagging results to humans using a novel exploration task in virtual reality. Mimicking conditions for animal research, sixty participants underwent a context conditioning task in virtual reality to create a hippocampal-dependent fear memory. Twenty-four hours later, half of the participants performed a novel exploration task in virtual reality shortly before extinction learning the next day, and the other half performed a visual control task. Twenty-four hours after extinction learning, remaining fear responses were evaluated by a reinstatement procedure. Results showed that participants acquired context conditioning, but no effect of the novel exploration procedure on fear responses during reinstatement could be noted. Thus, the study did not conceptually translate the rodent results to humans; possible reasons for this, as well as future directions, are discussed.