Stress peptides sensitize fear circuitry to promote passive coping.

ABSTRACT: Survival relies on optimizing behavioral responses through experience. Animals often react to acute stress by switching to passive behavioral responses when coping with environmental challenge. Despite recent advances in dissecting mammalian circuitry for Pavlovian fear, the neuronal basis underlying this form of non-Pavlovian anxiety-related behavioral plasticity remains poorly understood. Here, we report that aversive experience recruits the posterior paraventricular thalamus (PVT) and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and sensitizes a Pavlovian fear circuit to promote passive responding. Site-specific lesions and optogenetic manipulations reveal that PVT-to-central amygdala (CE) projections activate anxiogenic neuronal populations in the CE that release local CRH in response to acut

SUBMITTER: Pliota P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6169733 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature