B receptor signaling complex is required for presynaptic inhibition at hippocampal synapses(The Journal of Neuroscience, (2012), 32, 7, (2578))

摘要

Suppression of behaviors driven by unwanted memories can potentially be used as a treatment strategy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other anxiety disorders in which maladaptive behaviors may stem from the retrieval of fearful memories. Such retrieval can occur following exposure to a cue previously associated with a fearful event. Although a desirable treatment outcome would be to break the association between the cue and the fearful event, a complete unlearning is seldom observed, and therefore the fear response tends to relapse. In animal studies, associative fear memory is typically acquired in a Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm, in which a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS), such as a tone, is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), such as a foot-shock, resulting in a conditioned fear response to the CS. The most widely used strategy to suppress behaviors driven by fear memories is extinction training, in which repeated presentations of the CS in the absence of the US result in a reduction in the conditioned fear response.