A Novel Form of Memory for Auditory Fear Conditioning at a Low-Intensity Unconditioned Stimulus
A Novel Form of Memory for Auditory Fear Conditioning at a Low-Intensity Unconditioned Stimulus
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0004157
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发表时间：
2009-01-09
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Mishina, Masayoshi
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kishioka, Ayumi;Fukushima, Fumiaki;Mishina, Masayoshi
恐惧是最强有力的情感体验之一，是对潜在威胁刺激的适应性反应。另一方面，过多或不适当的恐惧导致了许多常见的精神问题。越来越多的证据表明，杏仁核在恐惧记忆的获得、储存和表达中起着核心作用。在这里，我们开发了一个可诱导的纹状体神经元消融系统在转基因小鼠。在标准条件下，成年人纹状体神经元的消融几乎不影响听觉恐惧学习，这与以前的研究一致。然而，当条件与低强度的非条件刺激，形成长期的恐惧记忆，但不是短期记忆受损的纹状体神经元切除小鼠。因此，在长时程恐惧记忆形成时，在低强度非条件刺激条件化后24 h，切除纹状体神经元，可减少长时程记忆的保持。我们的研究结果揭示了一种新的形式的听觉恐惧记忆依赖于纹状体神经元在低强度的非条件刺激。
Fear is one of the most potent emotional experiences and is an adaptive component of response to potentially threatening stimuli. On the other hand, too much or inappropriate fear accounts for many common psychiatric problems. Cumulative evidence suggests that the amygdala plays a central role in the acquisition, storage and expression of fear memory. Here, we developed an inducible striatal neuron ablation system in transgenic mice. The ablation of striatal neurons in the adult brain hardly affected the auditory fear learning under the standard condition in agreement with previous studies. When conditioned with a low-intensity unconditioned stimulus, however, the formation of long-term fear memory but not short-tem memory was impaired in striatal neuron-ablated mice. Consistently, the ablation of striatal neurons 24 h after conditioning with the low-intensity unconditioned stimulus, when the long-term fear memory was formed, diminished the retention of the long-term memory. Our results reveal a novel form of the auditory fear memory depending on striatal neurons at the low-intensity unconditioned stimulus.