Time-dependent neural arbitration between cue associative and episodic fear memories

Aurelio Cortese (), Ryu Ohata, Maria Alemany-González, Norimichi Kitagawa, Hiroshi Imamizu () and Ai Koizumi ()
Additional contact information
Aurelio Cortese: ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories
Ryu Ohata: The University of Tokyo
Maria Alemany-González: Inc.
Norimichi Kitagawa: Yoshika Institute of Psychology
Hiroshi Imamizu: The University of Tokyo
Ai Koizumi: Inc.

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract After traumatic events, simple cue-threat associative memories strengthen while episodic memories become incoherent. However, how the brain prioritises cue associations over episodic coding of traumatic events remains unclear. Here, we developed an original episodic threat conditioning paradigm in which participants concurrently form two memory representations: cue associations and episodic cue sequence. We discovered that these two distinct memories compete for physiological fear expression, reorganising overnight from an overgeneralised cue-based to a precise sequence-based expression. With multivariate fMRI, we track inter-area communication of the memory representations to reveal that a rebalancing between hippocampal- and prefrontal control of the fear regulatory circuit governs this memory maturation. Critically, this overnight re-organisation is altered with heightened trait anxiety. Together, we show the brain prioritises generalisable associative memories under recent traumatic stress but resorts to selective episodic memories 24 h later. Time-dependent memory competition may provide a unifying account for memory dysfunctions in post-traumatic stress disorders.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52733-4 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:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-52733-4

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52733-4

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 ().