**5.1 Consolidation of fear memory**

Fear memory, which is the important component of peritraumatic distress, has attracted considerable attention especially preclinically. An excellent review by Ressler & Mayberg (2007) has demonstrated that memories do not immediately become permanent at the time of initial experience but exist in a labile state for at least a period of hours and possibly days, during which time they become consolidated into more permanent memory. During this consolidation, molecular, synaptic, neurotransmitter, and system-level changes occur consecutively (McGaugh, 2000). The neural circuitry implicated in fear memory likely involves complex interactions between the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the medial prefrontal cortex (Nemeroff et al., 2006). Because the hippocampus processes and temporarily stores new memory before transferring labile memory to the cortex for permanent storage (Feng et al., 2001), it may be possible to modulate the consolidation of new fear memories while they are being formed (Pitman & Delahanty, 2005) .
