Publication Date:
2010-11-12
Description:
The central amygdala (CEA), a nucleus predominantly composed of GABAergic inhibitory neurons, is essential for fear conditioning. How the acquisition and expression of conditioned fear are encoded within CEA inhibitory circuits is not understood. Using in vivo electrophysiological, optogenetic and pharmacological approaches in mice, we show that neuronal activity in the lateral subdivision of the central amygdala (CEl) is required for fear acquisition, whereas conditioned fear responses are driven by output neurons in the medial subdivision (CEm). Functional circuit analysis revealed that inhibitory CEA microcircuits are highly organized and that cell-type-specific plasticity of phasic and tonic activity in the CEl to CEm pathway may gate fear expression and regulate fear generalization. Our results define the functional architecture of CEA microcircuits and their role in the acquisition and regulation of conditioned fear behaviour.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Ciocchi, Stephane -- Herry, Cyril -- Grenier, Francois -- Wolff, Steffen B E -- Letzkus, Johannes J -- Vlachos, Ioannis -- Ehrlich, Ingrid -- Sprengel, Rolf -- Deisseroth, Karl -- Stadler, Michael B -- Muller, Christian -- Luthi, Andreas -- England -- Nature. 2010 Nov 11;468(7321):277-82. doi: 10.1038/nature09559.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Maulbeerstrasse 66, 4058 Basel, Switzerland.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21068837" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials
;
Amygdala/anatomy & histology/cytology/*physiology
;
Animals
;
Conditioning, Classical/*physiology
;
Fear/*physiology
;
Freezing Reaction, Cataleptic
;
Male
;
Mice
;
Mice, Inbred C57BL
;
Neural Inhibition/*physiology
;
Neural Pathways/cytology/*physiology
;
Neuronal Plasticity/physiology
;
Neurons/physiology
;
gamma-Aminobutyric Acid/metabolism
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink
