Publication Date:
2005-03-05
Description:
To elucidate molecular, cellular, and circuit changes that occur in the brain during learning, we investigated the role of a glutamate receptor subtype in fear conditioning. In this form of learning, animals associate two stimuli, such as a tone and a shock. Here we report that fear conditioning drives AMPA-type glutamate receptors into the synapse of a large fraction of postsynaptic neurons in the lateral amygdala, a brain structure essential for this learning process. Furthermore, memory was reduced if AMPA receptor synaptic incorporation was blocked in as few as 10 to 20% of lateral amygdala neurons. Thus, the encoding of memories in the lateral amygdala is mediated by AMPA receptor trafficking, is widely distributed, and displays little redundancy.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Rumpel, Simon -- LeDoux, Joseph -- Zador, Anthony -- Malinow, Roberto -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2005 Apr 1;308(5718):83-8. Epub 2005 Mar 3.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15746389" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amygdala/cytology/metabolism/*physiology/virology
;
Animals
;
Association Learning/*physiology
;
Conditioning (Psychology)
;
Electrophysiology
;
Fear
;
Female
;
Genetic Vectors
;
Green Fluorescent Proteins/metabolism
;
Long-Term Potentiation
;
Male
;
Memory/*physiology
;
Neural Pathways/physiology
;
*Neuronal Plasticity
;
Neurons/metabolism/*physiology/virology
;
Patch-Clamp Techniques
;
Protein Transport
;
Rats
;
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
;
Receptors, AMPA/*metabolism
;
Recombinant Fusion Proteins/metabolism
;
Simplexvirus/genetics
;
Synapses/metabolism/*physiology
;
Synaptic Transmission
;
Thalamus/physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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