Testing the Impact of Neuromodulation on Contextual Reversal Learning and Generalization

One challenge regarding exposure therapy for anxiety-related disorders is that initial fear learning generalizes readily across contexts, while subsequent “corrective” learning tends to be contextually-bound. As prefrontal-hippocampal connections support contextual learning, we tested whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) impacted contextually-bound corrective learning using a reversal paradigm.