Encoding of contextual fear memory in hippocampal-amygdala circuit.

ABSTRACT: In contextual fear conditioning, experimental subjects learn to associate a neutral context with an aversive stimulus and display fear responses to a context that predicts danger. Although the hippocampal-amygdala pathway has been implicated in the retrieval of contextual fear memory, the mechanism by which fear memory is encoded in this circuit has not been investigated. Here, we show that activity in the ventral CA1 (vCA1) hippocampal projections to the basal amygdala (BA), paired with aversive stimuli, contributes to encoding conditioned fear memory. Contextual fear conditioning induced selective strengthening of a subset of vCA1-BA synapses, which was prevented under anisomycin-induced retrograde amnesia. Moreover, a subpopulation of BA neurons receives stronger monosynaptic inputs fro

SUBMITTER: Kim WB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7069961 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature