AI Article Synopsis
- Animals must evaluate their surroundings for threats to survive, but the brain's process of combining spatial awareness and risk assessment is not well understood.
- In a study with rats, researchers found that when the rats left their safe nest to search for food and faced a simulated predator, neurons in the basal amygdala (BA) increased their activity, while place cells in the dorsal hippocampus (dHPC) became less stable.
- The findings indicate a strong link between fear-related activity in the BA and spatial processing in the dHPC, showing how these brain areas work together to help animals navigate between safe and dangerous spaces.
Article Abstract
Animals seeking survival needs must be able to assess different locations of threats in their habitat. However, the neural integration of spatial and risk information essential for guiding goal-directed behavior remains poorly understood. Thus, we investigated simultaneous activities of fear-responsive basal amygdala (BA) and place-responsive dorsal hippocampus (dHPC) neurons as rats left the safe nest to search for food in an exposed space and encountered a simulated 'predator.' In this realistic situation, BA cells increased their firing rates and dHPC place cells decreased their spatial stability near the threat. Importantly, only those dHPC cells synchronized with the predator-responsive BA cells remapped significantly as a function of escalating risk location. Moreover, optogenetic stimulation of BA neurons was sufficient to cause spatial avoidance behavior and disrupt place fields. These results suggest a dynamic interaction of BA's fear signalling cells and dHPC's spatial coding cells as animals traverse safe-danger areas of their environment.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8500711 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.72040 | DOI Listing |
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