Acute sleep disruption reduces fear memories in male and female mice.

Neuropsychopharmacology

Department of Psychiatry, Basic Neuroscience Division, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, USA.

Published: December 2024

AI Article Synopsis

  • Sleep problems are common in mental health conditions like PTSD, but the relationship between sleep and trauma recovery isn't fully understood.
  • Research suggests that disrupting sleep immediately after a traumatic event may weaken fear memories, potentially leading to therapeutic benefits.
  • Experiments with mice showed that disrupting sleep after fear conditioning led to reduced fear responses and increased levels of BDNF in a brain area related to fear, indicating possible neurochemical changes that could help with trauma-related treatments.

Article Abstract

Sleep problems are a prominent feature of mental health conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite its potential importance, the role of sleep in the development of and/or recovery from trauma-related illnesses is not understood. Interestingly, there are reports that sleep disruption immediately after a traumatic experience can reduce fear memories, an effect that could be utilized therapeutically in humans. While the mechanisms of this effect are not completely understood, one possible explanation for these findings is that immediate sleep disruption interferes with consolidation of fear memories, rendering them weaker and more sensitive to intervention. Here, we allowed fear-conditioned mice to sleep immediately after fear conditioning during a time frame (18 h) that includes and extends beyond periods typically associated with memory consolidation before subjecting them to 6-h of sleep disruption. Mice exposed to this delayed regimen showed dramatic reductions in fear during tests conducted immediately after sleep disruption, as well as 24 h later. This sleep disruption regimen also increased levels of mRNA encoding brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a molecule implicated in neuroplasticity, in the basolateral amygdala (BLA), a brain area implicated in fear and its extinction. These findings raise the possibility that the effects of our delayed sleep disruption regimen are not due to disruption of memory consolidation, but instead are caused by BDNF-mediated neuroadaptations within the BLA that actively suppress expression of fear. Treatments that safely reduce expression of fear memories would have considerable therapeutic potential in the treatment of conditions triggered by trauma.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11631974PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41386-024-01978-0DOI Listing

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