Joseph E. Dunsmoor

Unravelling the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying counterconditioning in humans

This study uses fMRI to compare counterconditioning and regular extinction in humans, finding distinct neural patterns and more persistent threat memory extinction with counterconditioning.

Enhanced Episodic Memory Following Putative Inhibition of the Amygdala via Transcranial Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound

This study shows that tFUS targeting the amygdala enhances both emotional and neutral memory, suggesting a role for the amygdala in filtering non-salient stimuli rather than amplifying salient ones.

Rewarded extinction increases amygdalar connectivity and stabilizes long-term memory traces in the vmPFC

This study compares counterconditioning (rewarded extinction) to standard extinction in humans, finding that rewarded extinction reduces threat relapse and creates a stable memory trace in the vmPFC over one month.

Survival of the salient: Emotion rescues otherwise forgettable memories via neural reactivation and post-encoding hippocampal connectivity

This study investigates how emotions enhance memory for otherwise forgettable information through neural reactivation and hippocampal connectivity.

Neural reinstatement guides context-dependent emotional memory retrieval

This study shows that neural reinstatement of context helps resolve emotional memory competition in healthy individuals but not in PTSD.

Effects of post-training novelty exposure on contextual fear memory: An attempt to translate behavioral tagging to humans

This study tests if novelty exposure improves weak contextual fear memories in humans, finding no support for the behavioral tagging hypothesis.