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

In rodents, poorly formed hippocampal memories can be improved by novelty exploration within a critical time window, in line with the \"behavioral tagging\" hypothesis. Here, we sought to establish an analogue protocol to investigate if novelty exploration similarly operates to rescue weak hippocampal-dependent memories in humans. Adult humans underwent suboptimal contextual fear conditioning, followed 10 minutes later by open field novelty exploration in immersive 3D virtual reality. Novelty exploration did not improve long-term contextual fear memory, contrary to a behavioral tagging hypothesis. Despite this null result, we suggest further attempts to translate behavioral tagging from rodents to humans is warranted.