Publications by authors named "M F Bacon"

The ability to monitor the activity of specific cell types is critical for understanding the complex interplay between various neuronal populations driving freely moving behavior. Existing methods, such as optogenetic tagging (i.e.

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 Playing drinking games (DGs) is a common, socially-interactive risky drinking activity. During the pandemic, many students either returned home to live with their parents or remained on campus. Because DGs often require social interaction, playing DGs in-person can increase students' risk for COVID-19 exposure.

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Prior adversity increases susceptibility to subsequent stressful events, but the causal underlying changes in brain circuitry are poorly understood. We harnessed unbiased whole-brain activity mapping to identify circuits that are functionally remodeled by prior adversity. This revealed that the anterior hypothalamic nucleus (AHN) displays heightened stress reactivity in previously stressed mice.

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Article Synopsis
  • Memories are formed in the brain during learning and become stable through a process called reactivation after the learning phase.
  • A strong negative experience in mice leads to the reactivation not just of that recent memory, but also of a related neutral memory formed two days earlier, linking these memories in a way that influences future fear responses.
  • The study suggests that this co-reactivation happens more during wakefulness and helps the brain integrate and relate different memories over time.
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Stress can have profound consequences on mental health. While much is known about the neural circuits supporting associative memories of stressful events, our understanding of the circuits underlying the non-associative impacts of stress, such as heightened stress sensitivity and anxiety-related behavior, is limited. Here, we demonstrate that the ventral hippocampus (vHC) and basolateral amygdala (BLA) support distinct non-associative behavioral changes following stress.

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