Neural Mechanisms of Escape From Fear Learning

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Pavlovian conditioned fear is widely used to study the neural mechanisms of associative learning and anxiety. Conditioned fear is typically induced by pairing a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) with an aversive unconditioned stimulus. Subsequent presentations of the CS elicit fear reactions. While this research is important, it neglects a class of learning with direct relevance to fear pathology and coping in humans: fear-motivated instrumental learning. The Escape From Fear (EFF) task was developed to study this learning separately from fear acquisition. In EFF, animals are presented with fear-eliciting CSs that terminate when they make a specific response. Thus, CS-termination is contingent upon active responding, or more formally, conditioned negative reinforcement supports response learning. This proposal outlines an investigation of the neural circuits responsible for EFF learning using an optimized EFF procedure, lesions, inactivations and single-unit recordings. The initial focus will be interactions between the amygdala, a nucleus critical for fear conditioning, and striatum, a region linked to instrumental learning. The results should further our understanding of fear learning with potentially important implications for human treatment.