Optogenetic Stimulation of Prelimbic Pyramidal Neurons Maintains Fear Memories and Modulates Amygdala Pyramidal Neuron Transcriptome.

ABSTRACT: Fear extinction requires coordinated neural activity within the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Any behavior has a transcriptomic signature that is modified by environmental experiences, and specific genes are involved in functional plasticity and synaptic wiring during fear extinction. Here, we investigated the effects of optogenetic manipulations of prelimbic (PrL) pyramidal neurons and amygdala gene expression to analyze the specific transcriptional pathways associated to adaptive and maladaptive fear extinction. To this aim, transgenic mice were (or not) fear-conditioned and during the extinction phase they received optogenetic (or sham) stimulations over photo-activable PrL pyramidal neurons. At the end of behavioral testing, electrophysiological (neural cellular excitab

SUBMITTER: Laricchiuta D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7830910 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature