The instrument was purchased from COULBOURN. Fear conditioning a commonly used paradigm to assess an animals ability to learn basic associations. This testing paradigm is commonly employed to study the functioning of the hippocampal memory system (contextual fear conditioning), basic pavlovian conditioning that relies heavily upon the amygdala (cued fear conditioning), and/or the ability to learn to suppress a fear response once it has been learned (fear extinction). These models are employed to study basic memory function as well as to model disease in which fear and emotionality are key components (PTSD, anxiety disorders, phobias, and the beneficial effects various therapeutic interventions).