Topic: Pavlovian fear conditioning

Fear learning and extinction are crucial for survival and lead to disease, if impaired. Recently, it has been demonstrated that the cerebellum is bidirectionally controlling fear learning via the fastigial nucleus (FN) to ventrolateral periaqueductal grey (vlPAG) pathway in rodents (Frontera et al., 2020, Lawrenson et al., 2022). The mechanisms of the cerebellar influence on fear learning still need to be elucidated. Using a combined anterograde/retrograde viral tracing strategy, we targeted a dorsal raphe nuclei (DRN)/vlPAG pathway that projects on the FN. In extracellular recordings during a

Learning to identify and appropriately react to stimuli that predict threat is crucial for survival. Pavlovian fear conditioning is widely used to investigate the neuronal mechanisms of threat learning. In this study, we used fibre photometry calcium imaging in freely moving male and female mice to determine activity dynamics in nucleus accumbens (NAc), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and ventral hippocampus (vHip) during a Pavlovian fear conditioning task in which one auditory cue was paired with foot shock (CS+) and another remained unreinforced (CS-). Both cues elicited increased activity

Basolateral amygdala (BLA) principal neurons form distinct long-range circuits that mediate negative (via projections to the central amygdala) and positive (via projections to the nucleus accumbens) valence (Namburi et al., 2015). In a series of experiments using rats, we investigated the roles of these BLA pathways in Pavlovian fear learning. First, consistent with past work in mice, retrograde tracing showed that the two pathways were largely segregated; but, in contrast to past work in mice, single molecule FISH showed that these two pathways shared similar molecular profiles. Then, we used

The aim of this fMRI study was to assess the role of affect sharing (AS), an important aspect of empathy, in observational fear learning. N=37 students completed an observational Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm, in which they learned to fear a cue (assessed in a subsequent test stage) by watching videos of a demonstrator receiving shocks with that cue (learning stage). Participants watched the videos in a state of high or low AS, respectively, induced by hypnotic suggestions, using a within-subjects design. Unconditioned responses (UR) to the demonstrator’s pain during learning and condit