Central amygdala micro-circuits mediate fear extinction

Nigel Whittle, Jonathan Fadok, Kathryn P. MacPherson, Robin Nguyen, Paolo Botta, Steffen B. E. Wolff, Christian Müller, Cyril Herry, Philip Tovote, Andrew Holmes, Nicolas Singewald, Andreas Lüthi () and Stéphane Ciocchi ()
Additional contact information
Nigel Whittle: Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
Jonathan Fadok: Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
Kathryn P. MacPherson: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, NIH
Robin Nguyen: University of Bern
Paolo Botta: Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
Steffen B. E. Wolff: Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
Christian Müller: Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
Cyril Herry: Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
Philip Tovote: Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
Andrew Holmes: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, NIH
Nicolas Singewald: University of Innsbruck
Andreas Lüthi: Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
Stéphane Ciocchi: University of Bern

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Fear extinction is an adaptive process whereby defensive responses are attenuated following repeated experience of prior fear-related stimuli without harm. The formation of extinction memories involves interactions between various corticolimbic structures, resulting in reduced central amygdala (CEA) output. Recent studies show, however, the CEA is not merely an output relay of fear responses but contains multiple neuronal subpopulations that interact to calibrate levels of fear responding. Here, by integrating behavioural, in vivo electrophysiological, anatomical and optogenetic approaches in mice we demonstrate that fear extinction produces reversible, stimulus- and context-specific changes in neuronal responses to conditioned stimuli in functionally and genetically defined cell types in the lateral (CEl) and medial (CEm) CEA. Moreover, we show these alterations are absent when extinction is deficient and that selective silencing of protein kinase C delta-expressing (PKCδ) CEl neurons impairs fear extinction. Our findings identify CEA inhibitory microcircuits that act as critical elements within the brain networks mediating fear extinction.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24068-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-24068-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24068-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().