Maladaptive fear can develop when nonthreatening stimuli are misinterpreted as dangerous. While fear extinction has been extensively studied, organisms can also learn safety through relief learning, in which cues signalling the termination of an aversive event acquire positive value. Although the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is implicated in regulating responses to threat and safety cues, its role in relief learning remains unclear. In Experiment 1, I validated a relief conditioning paradigm in rats and demonstrated that relief-conditioned animals froze significantly less than fear-conditioned animals during retention. Experiment 2 revealed that relief learning selectively activated the prelimbic cortex (PrL). In Experiment 3, chemogenetic inhibition of the PrL reduced freezing across tones, supporting a causal role in relief expression. Experiment 4 demonstrated that extended training produced more stable and pronounced reductions in freezing than a one-day protocol. Together, these findings identify PrL circuits as key contributors to relief learning.Keywords: Maladaptive fear, relief learning, fear conditioning, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), fear extinction, rat model, behavioural freezing, Fos expression, neural circuitry, conditioned stimuli, aversive stimuli, neuroimaging.
Author Keywords: Conditioned stimuli, Fear condtioning, Maladaptive fear, Medial prefrontal cortex, Neural circuitry, Relief learning