Illuminating Hippocampal Control of Fear Memory and Anxiety

Previous reports on dorsal and ventral hippocampal regulation of context learning versus anxiety have been mixed. In this issue of Neuron, a new study by Kheirbek et al. (2013) using optogenetics demonstrates that dentate gyrus granule cell activity in dorsal hippocampus encodes contextual fear learning while ventral granule cell activity regulates anxiety behavior.