US-France Cooperative Research: The Anatomy of Fear-Networks in the Lateral Amygdala

恐惧是一种情绪反应，以主观状态（恐惧的感觉）和身体反应为特征，由威胁刺激引起。对威胁的检测和保护性身体反应（行为、自主和内分泌变化）的产生是生物生存的重要组成部分。大脑的回路似乎是预先连接的，可以对某些刺激做出反应，比如祖先的威胁，以及与预先连接的危险相关的新刺激。个人可以利用过去情况的信息来避免潜在的危险生物、物体和情况。然而，大脑恐惧系统编码、存储和检索条理性恐惧记忆的电路、网络特性和计算尚不清楚。在这个为期三年的合作研究项目中，纽约大学神经科学中心的约瑟夫·勒杜、卢克·约翰逊和巴黎南方大学的瓦莱丽·多耶尔将确定大脑侧杏仁核中负责恐惧行为的潜在神经回路和网络。该项目结合了美国和法国研究人员的互补专业知识，将促进对哺乳动物大脑如何编码、存储和检索恐惧记忆的理解。国家科学基金会（NSF）和国家科学研究中心（CNRS）将共同支持该项目。美国国家科学基金会将支付美国研究人员访问法国的费用。法国国家科学研究中心将为法国调查人员前往美国提供资金。

0340607LeDouxFear is an emotional response characterized by both the subjective state (the feeling of fear) and bodily responses elicited by threatening stimuli. The detection of threats and the production of protective bodily responses (behavioral, autonomic, and endocrine changes) are a vital part of biological survival. The brain has circuits that appear pre-wired to respond to some stimuli, such as ancestral threats, and novel stimuli associated with pre-wired dangers. Individuals can use information from past situations to avoid potentially dangerous organisms, objects, and situations. However, the circuits, network properties and computations performed by the brain's fear systems to encode, store and retrieve conditioned fear memories are not yet known. In this three-year cooperative research project, Joseph LeDoux, Luke Johnson of New York University's Center for Neural Science and Valerie Doyere of the Universite Paris-Sud will identify the underlying neural circuitry and networks in lateral amygdala of the brain responsible for fear behaviors. The project combines complementary expertise of the U.S. and French investigators and will advance understanding of how the mammalian brain encodes, stores and retrieves fear memory. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) will jointly support this project. NSF will cover the costs of the U.S. investigator's visits to France. The CNRS will provide funding to the French investigator for travel to the United States.