Publications by authors named "Ze-Jie Lin"
Effective psychotherapy of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remains challenging owing to the fragile nature of fear extinction, for which the ventral hippocampal CA1 (vCA1) region is considered as a central hub. However, neither the core pathway nor the cellular mechanisms involved in implementing extinction are known. Here, we unveil a direct pathway, where layer 2a fan cells in the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) target parvalbumin-expressing interneurons (PV-INs) in the vCA1 region to propel low-gamma-band synchronization of the LEC-vCA1 activity during extinction learning.
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- Threat and extinction memories are vital for survival in changing environments, encoded by different neuron ensembles in the brain, specifically within the insular cortex (IC).
- Research using male mice revealed two distinct neuron subpopulations in the IC that target the central amygdala (CeA) for fear memory and the nucleus accumbens (NAc) for extinction memory, highlighting how intracortical inhibition influences which memory type emerges.
- The study also found that IC-NAc neurons receive inputs from the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), suggesting that this area enhances extinction memory, illustrating the IC's role in distinguishing between fear and extinction memories with help from the OFC.
Article Synopsis
- - Fear extinction can help control learned fear responses, but often fails, leading to a return of the original fear due to forgetting of the extinction memory.
- - Researchers found that specific neurons related to fear extinction memory are located in the medial prefrontal cortex, basolateral amygdala, and ventral hippocampus, and they work together in a directional way to help retrieve extinction memories.
- - When fear returns, the connections for retrieving extinction memories become less accessible, but further extinction training or certain experimental techniques can restore these connections and prevent the fear from coming back.