Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful research tool to understand the neural underpinnings of human memory. However, as memory is known to be context-dependent, differences in contexts between naturalistic settings and the MRI scanner environment may potentially confound neuroimaging findings. Virtual reality (VR) provides a unique opportunity to mitigate this issue by allowing memories to be formed and/or retrieved within immersive, navigable, visuospatial contexts. This can enhance the ecological validity of task paradigms, while still ensuring that researchers maintain experimental control over critical aspects of the learning and testing experience. This mini-review surveys the growing body of fMRI studies that have incorporated VR to address critical questions about human memory. These studies have adopted a variety of approaches, including presenting research participants with VR experiences in the scanner, asking participants to retrieve information that they had previously acquired in a VR environment, or identifying neural correlates of behavioral metrics obtained through VR-based tasks performed outside the scanner. Although most such studies to date have focused on spatial or navigational memory, we also discuss the promise of VR in aiding other areas of memory research and facilitating research into clinical disorders.

The method of loci (MoL) is a well-known mnemonic technique in which visuospatial spatial environments are used to scaffold the memorization of non-spatial information. We developed a novel virtual reality-based implementation of the MoL in which participants used three unique virtual environments to serve as their "memory palaces." In each world, participants were presented with a sequence of 15 3D objects that appeared in front of their avatar for 20 s each. The experimental group (N = 30) was given the ability to click on each object to lock it in place, whereas the control group (N = 30) was not afforded this functionality. We found that despite matched engagement, exposure duration, and instructions emphasizing the efficacy of the mnemonic across groups, participants in the experimental group recalled 28% more objects. We also observed a strong relationship between spatial memory for objects and landmarks in the environment and verbal recall strength. These results provide evidence for spatially mediated processes underlying the effectiveness of the MoL and contribute to theoretical models of memory that emphasize spatial encoding as the primary currency of mnemonic function.

Introduction Threat conditioning and extinction play an important role in anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although these conditions commonly affect children, threat conditioning and extinction have been primarily studied in adults. However, differences in phenomenology and neural architecture prohibit the generalization of adult findings to youth. Areas covered A comprehensive literature search using PubMed and PsycInfo was conducted to identify studies that have used differential conditioning tasks to examine threat acquisition and extinction in youth. The information obtained from this review helps to clarify the influence of these processes on the etiology and treatment of youth with OCD, PTSD and other anxiety disorders. Thirty studies of threat conditioning and extinction were identified. Expert Commentary Youth with anxiety disorders, OCD, and PTSD have largely comparable threat acquisition relative to unaffected controls, with some distinctions noted for youth with PTSD or youth who have suffered maltreatment. However, impaired extinction was consistently observed across youth with these disorders and appears to be consistent with deficiencies in inhibitory learning. Incorporating strategies to improve inhibitory learning may improve extinction learning within extinction-based treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Strategies to improve inhibitory learning in CBT are discussed.

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