It takes two: Bilateral bed nuclei of the stria terminalis mediate the expression of contextual fear, but not of moderate cued fear.

ABSTRACT: A growing body of research supports a prominent role for the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) in the expression of adaptive and perhaps even pathological anxiety. The traditional premise that the BST is required for long-duration responses to threats, but not for fear responses to distinct, short-lived cues may, however, be oversimplified. A thorough evaluation of the involvement of the BST in cued and contextual fear is therefore warranted. In a series of preregistered experiments using male Wistar rats, we first addressed the involvement of the BST in cued fear. Following up on earlier work where we found that BST lesions disrupted auditory fear while the animals were in a rather high stress state, we here show that the BST is not required for the expression of more specific fea

SUBMITTER: Luyck K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7611861 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature