Identification of somatostatin+ inhibitory engrams for extinction in the basolateral amygdala - PubMed
3 hours ago
- #inhibitory engram
- #fear extinction
- #GABAergic neurons
- The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is crucial for processing threat and emotional information, and controls fear memory.
- Extinction creates a new memory that coexists with the original fear memory, with interneurons playing a key role.
- A chemogenetic strategy was developed to tag GABAergic interneurons during specific behavioral epochs for better sensitivity and specificity.
- Silencing extinction-tagged BLA neurons or stimulating fear acquisition-tagged BLA neurons caused fear memory relapse.
- Silencing BLA GABAergic neurons, especially extinction-tagged ones, restored fear expression post-extinction, while inhibiting acquisition-tagged neurons did not affect fear memory retrieval.
- Specific inhibitory GABAergic BLA engrams formed during fear extinction interfere with fear memory circuits and suppress conditioned fear.
- These findings offer insights into fear extinction mechanisms and suggest BLA GABAergic neurons as therapeutic targets for disorders like PTSD.