Journal
NATURE
Volume 468, Issue 7321, Pages 277-U239Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nature09559
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- Schering Foundation
- European Commission [HEALTH-F2-2009-241498]
- Indo Swiss Joint Research Programme
- BMBF [01GQ0420]
- Neurex Interreg-IV
- Volkswagen Stiftung
- Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research
- Novartis Research Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
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.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available