Fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm commonly used to test an organism's ability to form associations and learn to avoid aversive stimuli. There are two methodologies: cue conditioning and contextual fear conditioning (Kim and Jung, 2006). In cued fear conditioning, a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) that activates strong unconditioned fear responses (UR). After a period of continuous training, the neutral CS is now capable of activating a conditioned response (CR). Similarly, contextual conditioning occurs when the background or contextual cues, during conditional training, are able to predict the US and activate the fear response. For example, a mouse may be placed in a new environment and given an aversive stimulus (e.g. a foot shock). When the mouse is returned to this same environment, it will display a CR (e.g. freeze). The ability of mice to condition contextual fear depends on their ability to learn and associate their environment with the aversive stimulus. (Curzon, Rustay, & Browman, 2009) One of the most famous examples of fear conditioning is the Little Albert experiment conducted by Watson and Rayner in 1920. In this experiment, an infant, Albert, was introduced to a white rat, and as expected, Albert initially showed no signs of fear and began to touch and play with the rat. Soon, experimenters began pairing the rat's presentation with a loud noise (US) produced by banging a hammer on a steel bar. The noise startled Albert and made him cry (UR). After several pairings, Albert learned to fear the rat (CS) and to crawl or cry (CR) when the rat was next presented to him (Watson and Rayner, 1920). Fear conditioning occurs when an organism is able...... middle of document ... because long-term potentiation plays different roles in fear conditioning. Hippocampal LTP is responsible for context assembly and consolidation in the hippocampus. The context then becomes associated with the United States in the amygdala. Finally, the amygdala plays an important role in the construction and storage of the CS-US association during fear conditioning (Maren, 2001). Studying these mechanisms will prove valuable for understanding synaptic plasticity in other learning and memory systems. It is also possible to use fear conditioning as a model for fear disorders. Research on fear conditioning at the intracellular level, such as the role of glutamate receptors, provides a basis for understanding memory formation and allows us to begin to unravel disorders that have fear as a component: anxiety, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (Kim & Jung, 2006).