The extinction of conditioned-fear represents a hallmark of current exposure therapies as it has been found to be impaired in people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety. A large body of knowledge focusing on psychophysiol...
The potential contribution of the ion channels that control the excitability of the midline and intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus to the modulation of behaviors has not been well studied. In this study, we used both global genetic deletion (knock-o...
Fear conditioning constitutes the best and most reproducible paradigm to study the neurobiological mechanisms underlying emotions. On the other hand, studies on the synaptic plasticity phenomena underlying fear conditioning present neural circuits en...
Observational fear-learning studies in genetically modified animals enable the investigation of the mechanisms underlying the social transmission of fear-related information. Here, we used a three-day protocol to examine fear conditioning by proxy (F...
Fear conditioning evokes a physiologic release of glucocorticoids that assists learning. As a cochaperone in the glucocorticoid receptor complex, FKBP51 modulates stress-induced glucocorticoid signaling and may influence conditioned fear responses. T...
Many dogs show signs of fear during veterinary appointments. It is widely recommended to use desensitization and counter-conditioning training to reduce this fear. However, the efficacy of this method for reducing veterinary fear has not been examine...
Accumulating evidence suggests that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been implicated in the acquisition of fear memory during trace fear conditioning in which a conditional stimulus (CS) is paired with an aversive unconditional stimulus (UCS)...
This dataset provides synchronized multimodal behavioral measurements from 36 mice across four experimental groups: wild-type and rTg4510 tauopathy mice, each tested with or without doxycycline-mediated suppression of mutant tau expression. Of these,...
There is evidence for the involvement of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) in pain, cognition, and anxiety. However, their role in pain–fear interactions is unknown. The amygdala plays a key role in pain, conditioned fear, and...
Anxiety disorders impose substantial costs upon public health and productivity in the USA and worldwide. At present, these conditions are quantified by self-report questionnaires that only apply to behaviors that are accessible to consciousness, or b...
Objectives: Females are often underrepresented in preclinical fear research due to concerns over estrous cycle related variability. This study examined whether there were differences between female and male C57BL/6J mice in terms of fear extinction a...
Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) are nuclear receptors with three isoforms (PPARα, PPARβ/δ, PPARγ) and can regulate pain, anxiety, and cognition. However, their role in conditioned fear and pain-fear interact...
28 November 2022
Sex differences in emotion regulation strategies may impact sex differences in affective disorders. Using cognitive reappraisal strategy in the discriminative task of conditioned fear was studied to understand how sex differences in emotion regulatio...
Fear of crime can lead to lower satisfaction with life and subjective well-being. The indicators of fear of crime vary from the social and cultural context, and the hukou (household registration) status causes unequal rights between local hukou and n...
Neuropeptide Y (NPY) has anxiolytic-like effects and facilitates the extinction of cued and contextual fear in rodents. We have previously shown that the intracerebroventricular administration of NPY reduces the expression of social fear in a mouse m...
Background: Fear, stress, and anxiety-like behaviors originate from traumatic events in life. Stress response is managed by endocannabinoids in the body by limiting the uncontrolled retrieval of aversive memories. Pharmacotherapy-modulating endocanna...
Background/Objectives: Rodents provide a useful translational model of fear- and anxiety-related behaviors. Previously stressed animals exhibit physiological and behavioral stress responses that parallel those observed in anxious humans. Patients dia...
Currently, there are no animal models for studying both specific social fear and social fear with comorbidities. Here, we investigated whether social fear conditioning (SFC), an animal model with face, predictive and construct validity for social anx...
Acid sphingomyelinase (ASM) regulates a variety of physiological processes and plays an important role in emotional behavior. The role of ASM in fear-related behavior has not been investigated so far. Using transgenic mice overexpressing ASM (ASMtg)...
The latency of startle reflex potentiation may shed light on the aware and unaware processes underlying associative learning, especially associative fear learning. We review research suggesting that single-cue delay classical conditioning is independ...
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 pla...
Balanced fear supports human rational decision-making and useful behavioral responses. In contrast, overwhelming, persistent, and unbalanced fear can paralyze the individual and result in heightened anxiety, lack of cognitive flexibility, fear-based...
Fear acquisition is an essential survival mechanism for humans; however, the role and mechanisms of mindfulness training in this process remain unclear. This study employed a discriminative fear conditioning paradigm to investigate the effects and me...
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a widespread fear-related psychiatric affection associated with fear extinction impairments and important avoidance behaviors. Trauma-related exposure therapy is the current first-hand treatment for PTSD, yet i...
Neuropeptide Y (NPY) has anxiolytic-like effects and facilitates the extinction of cued and contextual fear in rodents. We previously showed that intracerebroventricular administration of NPY reduces the expression of social fear in a mouse model of...
Background: Ceftriaxone upregulates GLT1 glutamate transporter in the brain and may have anti-CFC and anti-OCD effects. Methods: Twenty WZ-5HT rats were used to investigate the effects of ceftriaxone on obsessive–compulsive (OCD)-like behaviour...
Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is complicated by the presence of drug use disorder comorbidity. Here, we examine whether conditioned fear (PTSD model) modifies the rewarding effect of mephedrone and if repeated mephedrone injectio...
Few studies have examined the time-dependent effects of stress on fear learning. Previously, we found that stress immediately before fear conditioning enhanced fear learning. Here, we aimed to extend these findings by assessing the effects of stress...
Fear is characterized by distinct behavioral and physiological responses that are essential for the survival of the human species. Fear conditioning (FC) serves as a valuable model for studying the acquisition, extinction, and expression of fear. The...
Ketamine, a multimodal anesthetic drug, has become increasingly popular in the treatment of pain following traumatic injury as well as treatment-resistant major depressive disorders. However, the psychological impact of this dissociative medication o...
The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is one of the key brain areas involved in aversive learning, especially fear memory formation. Studies of aversive learning in the BLA have largely focused on neuronal function, while the role of BLA astrocytes in avers...
Fear overgeneralization is a prevalent clinical symptom of anxiety disorders. Various research studies have demonstrated that attention plays a crucial role in fear generalization. Moreover, fear is not only generalized to the stimulus, but individua...
Background: Studies have demonstrated that fear memories can be modified using non-invasive methods. Recently, we demonstrated that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is capable of enhanc...
Cannabidiol, the main non-psychotropic constituent of cannabis, has potential as a treatment for anxiety-related disorders since it reduces learned fear expression and enhances fear extinction. The return of fear over time after successful extinction...
Certain life stressors having enduring physiological and behavioral consequences, in part by eliciting dramatic signaling shifts in monoamine neurotransmitters. High monoamine levels can overwhelm selective transporters like the serotonin transporter...
Background: glucocorticoids may play an important role in the formation of fear memory, which is relevant to the neurobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In our previous study, we showed the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) forms a protein...
Metabotropic glutamate 5 receptors (mGlu5) are thought to play an important role in mediating emotional information processing. In particular, negative allosteric modulators (NAMs) of mGlu5 have received a lot of attention as potential novel treatmen...
Childhood maltreatment may alter fear neurocircuitry, which results in pathological anxiety and depression. One alteration of fear-related behaviors that has been observed in several psychiatric populations is an overgeneralization of fear. Thus, we...
Anxiety disorders are associated with a failure to sufficiently extinguish fear memories. The serotonergic system (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) with the 5-HT transporter (5-HTT, SERT) is strongly implicated in the regulation of anxiety and fear. In the...
Down syndrome (DS), trisomy of the long arm of human chromosome 21 (Hsa21), is the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability (ID). Currently, there are no effective pharmacotherapies. The success of clinical trials to improve cognition dep...
The mammalian hippocampal dentate gyrus is a unique memory circuit in which a subset of neurons is continuously generated throughout the lifespan. Previous studies have shown that the dentate gyrus neuronal population can hold fear memory traces (i.e...
Clinical studies have demonstrated that the γ-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptor complex plays a central role in the modulation of anxiety. Conditioned fear and anxiety-like behaviors have many similarities at the neuroanatomical and pha...
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating psychosomatic condition characterized by impairment of brain fear circuits and persistence of exceptionally strong associative memories resistant to extinction. In this study, we investigated the...
Anxiety is associated with an exaggerated expectancy of harm, including overestimation of how likely a conditioned stimulus (CS+) predicts a harmful unconditioned stimulus (US). In the current study we tested whether anxiety-associated expectancy of...
The amygdala plays a critical role in the acquisition and consolidation of fear-related memories. Recent studies have demonstrated that ADP-ribosylation of histones, accelerated by PARPs, affects the chromatin structure and the binding of chromatin r...
Cholinergic neuronal networks in the hippocampus play a key role in the regulation of learning and memory in mammals. Perturbations of these networks, in turn, underlie neurodegenerative diseases. However, the mechanisms remain largely undefined. We...
Background: Hyperphosphorylated tau accumulation and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) are hallmarks of tauopathies, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and are strongly associated with cognitive decline. The rTg4510 mouse model, which expresses m...
Previous studies demonstrate that ethanol dependence induced by repeating cycles of chronic intermittent ethanol vapor exposure (CIE) followed by protracted abstinence produces significant gray matter damage via myelin dysfunction in the rodent media...
Background: Genetic factors pertinent to Parkinson’s disease (PD) might predispose an individual to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Humans who are heterozygous for the glucocerebrosidase 1 (GBA) L444P Gaucher mutation have an increased P...
The essential trace element selenium plays an important role in maintaining brain function. Selenoprotein W (SELENOW), the smallest selenoprotein that has been identified in mammals, is sensitive to selenium levels and abundantly expressed in the bra...
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