Excitation of prefrontal cortical neurons during conditioning enhances fear memory formation.

ABSTRACT: Animals can remember a situation associated with an aversive event. Contextual fear memory is initially encoded and consolidated in the hippocampus and gradually consolidated in multiple brain regions over time, including the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC). However, it is not fully understood how PFC neurons contribute to contextual fear memory formation during learning. In the present study, neuronal activity was increased in PFC neurons utilizing the pharmacogenetic hM3Dq-system in male mice. We show that fear expression and memory formation are enhanced by increasing neuronal activity in PFC during conditioning phase. Previous studies showed that the activation of hM3Dq receptor in a subset of amygdala neurons enhanced fear memory formation and biased which neurons are allocated to a me

SUBMITTER: Shibano N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7248099 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature