Let's talk about sex … differences in human fear conditioning

Fear conditioning represents an experimental paradigm ideally suited to investigate aversive learning and memory mechanisms that are fundamental to the development, maintenance and treatment of mental disorders. Men and women seem to differ in their capability to learn and retrieve fear and extinction memories. This review outlines how sex may influence human fear conditioning, with an emphasis on the sex hormones and oral contraceptives. Available evidence suggests women with high estrogen levels to acquire fear more readily, but also to extinguish fear more easily, leading to an enhanced extinction memory trace. By contrast, women with low estrogens (e.g. due to oral contraceptives) seem to show deficits in extinction recall. These findings are highly relevant for future basic and applied studies alike.