Dopamine-dependent prefrontal reactivations explain long-term benefit of fear extinction.

ABSTRACT: Fear extinction does not prevent post-traumatic stress or have long-term therapeutic benefits in fear-related disorders unless extinction memories are easily retrieved at later encounters with the once-threatening stimulus. Previous research in rodents has pointed towards a role for spontaneous prefrontal activity occurring after extinction learning in stabilizing and consolidating extinction memories. In other memory domains spontaneous post-learning activity has been linked to dopamine. Here, we show that a neural activation pattern - evoked in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) by the unexpected omission of the feared outcome during extinction learning - spontaneously reappears during postextinction rest. The number of spontaneous vmPFC pattern reactivations predicts extinction

SUBMITTER: Gerlicher AMV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6191435 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature