By disrupting the recreation
of fear memories, exposure therapy can be made more effective for anxiety disorder patients, suggests a new report.
The researchers began with classical fear conditioning to create
fear memories in a group of rats.
From baby boomers
fearing memory loss to college students wanting a mental boost, interest in brain - training products is soaring.
With the passage of time, the fear can come back, we think, because you never actually change the
original fear memory.
Cho explained that the acquisition (encoding) and retrieval of
contextual fear memory requires coordinated neural activity in the hippocampus, amygdala and mPFC.
Next, to better understand the role of double - projecting hippocampal neurons in fear learning and memory, Cho and Kim plan to selectively silence these neurons and examine how this manipulation impacts the formation of
fear memory for a context associated with an aversive event.
Researchers at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have learned that the molecule Notch, critical in many processes during embryonic development, is also involved in
fear memory formation.
Today, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) announce the discovery of a new neural circuit in the brain that directly links the site of
fear memory with an area of the brainstem that controls behavior.
Using artificial intelligence and brain scanning technology, neuroscientists were able to override
specific fear memories by reconditioning the brain.
Following contextual fear conditioning, we then tested
fear memory retrieval in response to an auditory cue, within a different environment.
The drop in dopamine causes anxiety and confusion, now recalling short -
term fear memories, and oxytocin causes the ensuing feelings to register deeply in short - term memory, and so on.
Here, we define a neural circuit — composed of the medial prefrontal cortex, the nucleus reuniens (NR), and the hippocampus — that
controls fear memory generalization.
Targeting the amygdala, the almond - shaped region in all mammals
where fear memories are stored, Silva and his colleagues have shown that they can largely eliminate a mouse's fearful response to a tone the animal had previously learned to associate with an unpleasant electric stimulus.
In other words, memory engrams in the amygdala were maintained throughout, and were necessary for
recalling fear memories — but there was a change in which region the amygdala needed to be connected to in order for memory to function.
There are many exciting areas of inquiry suggesting that new pharmacotherapeutic and psychotherapeutic approaches can be initiated that may inhibit the emotional component of
fear memory consolidation, without affecting the explicit memory formation.
Gentle, structured training programs help them
overcome fear memories, develop new social skills and learn to trust.
Inactivation of prefrontal inputs into the NR or direct silencing of NR projections
enhanced fear memory generalization, whereas constitutive activation of NR neurons decreased memory generalization.
«Study expands understanding of how the brain
encodes fear memory: Study could lead to novel therapeutics aimed at reducing pathological fear in PTSD.»
If exposure therapy is successful, a new «safe» memory is formed, which overshadows the
old fear memory.
However, it is unclear which synaptic projections from the mPFC to subcortical regions are critical for maintaining the proper balance between retention and generalization of
fear memory details.
Increased fear memory generalization is associated with posttraumatic stress disorder, but the circuit mechanisms that regulate memory specificity remain unclear.
His current research exploits new methods to understand how the central amygdala
communicates fear memories to the areas of the brain that are responsible for action.
They then worked with a group at the Scripps Research Institute who had previously developed the Oprl1 - targeted drug to examine its effects
on fear memory modulation.
Understanding fear memory formation is critical to developing more effective treatments and preventions for anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
An overly
powerful fear memory, for example, can crystallize into a phobia, in which a relatively safe experience like flying in a plane is inextricably linked to a feeling of extreme danger.
The idea with reconsolidation is that maybe we can target the
actual fear memory — change it as opposed to inhibiting it.
Decrease in this specific ecRNA prevented formation of a long -
lasting fear memory, where rats learn to associate mild electrical shocks with a particular place.
Many older
adults fear memory loss and worry they are headed down the road to dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease.
Jun - Hyeong Cho, an assistant professor of cell biology and neuroscience and Woong Bin Kim, a postdoctoral researcher in Cho's lab, have now found that a population of hippocampal neurons project to both the amygdala and the mPFC, and that it is these neurons that efficiently convey information to these two brain areas to encode and
retrieve fear memory for a context associated with an aversive event.
The study came about when, a few years ago, Cho and Kim were selectively labeling and stimulating hippocampal neurons that project to the mPFC, and examining how this manipulation
affects fear memory formation in mice.
«Next, we want to see if we can do the same with not
only fear memories but pleasure memories or memories of objects or memories of other mice.»
«This study, done using a mouse model, expands our understanding of how
associative fear memory for a relevant context is encoded in the brain,» said Cho, the lead author of the study and a member of the UCR School of Medicine's Center for Glial - Neuronal Interactions, «and could inform the development of novel therapeutics to reduce pathological fear in PTSD.»
In a discovery that could have major implications for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and phobias, a team of neuroscientists from the University of Cambridge, Japan and the USA have developed a new technique for removing specific
fear memories from the brain.
«When we induced a
mild fear memory in the brain, we were able to develop a fast and accurate method of reading it by using AI algorithms,» explains study author Dr. Ben Seymour, of the University of Cambridge's Engineering Department, in a press release.
Title: Synaptic transmission changes in
fear memory circuits underlie key features of an animal model of schizophrenia Author: M. Pollard et al..
Researchers at New York University's LeDoux Laboratory have successfully deleted a single,
targeted fear memory using drug therapy in rats.
During fear memory retrieval in a different context (Figure 6f), all groups exhibited low, comparable baseline freezing.
The hippocampus and the amygdala are required for fear memory [18, 19].
However, upon tone presentation, McGill transgenic rats manifested significant deficits in amygdala - dependent
auditory fear memory, compared to non-transgenic littermates (F2, 21 = 47.12; p < 0.001)(Figure 6c).
Huynh, T.N., Santini, E., and Klann, E. (2014) Requirment of mammaliant target of rapamycin complex 1 downstream effectors in
cued fear memory reconsolidation and its persistence.
While studies situate the amygdala as the location of
fear memories formed by conditioning, scientists theorize that fear - extinction memories form in the amygdala but then are transferred to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) for storage.
The charges
around fear memories (that are hurtful), are transmuted efficiently, enabling health and wellbeing and reverential Awareness and Willpower to return.
By connecting these subtle patterns of
fear memories with a reward, the researchers hoped to gradually and unconsciously override the fears, so the team repeated this procedure over three days.