1. Genetic dissection of an amygdala microcircuit that gates conditioned fear
- Author
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Andreas Lüthi, Michael S. Fanselow, Jonathan Biag, Stephane Ciocchi, Prabhat S. Kunwar, Hong-Wei Dong, Edward M. Callaway, Ravikumar Ponnusamy, Nicholas R. Wall, Karl Deisseroth, David J. Anderson, Haijiang Cai, and Wulf Haubensak
- Subjects
Male ,Conditioning, Classical ,Neural Inhibition ,Axonal Transport ,Transgenic ,Mice ,0302 clinical medicine ,Basal ganglia ,Neural Pathways ,Cells, Cultured ,gamma-Aminobutyric Acid ,Neurons ,0303 health sciences ,Multidisciplinary ,Cultured ,Fear ,Amygdala ,Protein Kinase C-delta ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Genetic Techniques ,Freezing Reaction ,Neurological ,Female ,medicine.drug ,General Science & Technology ,Cells ,1.1 Normal biological development and functioning ,Central nervous system ,Mice, Transgenic ,Biology ,Inhibitory postsynaptic potential ,Article ,gamma-Aminobutyric acid ,03 medical and health sciences ,Underpinning research ,medicine ,Animals ,Humans ,Freezing Reaction, Cataleptic ,030304 developmental biology ,Classical conditioning ,Classical ,nervous system ,Synapses ,Axoplasmic transport ,Neuroscience ,Cataleptic ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Conditioning - Abstract
The role of different amygdala nuclei (neuroanatomical subdivisions) in processing Pavlovian conditioned fear has been studied extensively, but the function of the heterogeneous neuronal subtypes within these nuclei remains poorly understood. Here we use molecular genetic approaches to map the functional connectivity of a subpopulation of GABA-containing neurons, located in the lateral subdivision of the central amygdala (CEl), which express protein kinase C-δ (PKC-δ). Channelrhodopsin-2-assisted circuit mapping in amygdala slices and cell-specific viral tracing indicate that PKC-δ(+) neurons inhibit output neurons in the medial central amygdala (CEm), and also make reciprocal inhibitory synapses with PKC-δ(-) neurons in CEl. Electrical silencing of PKC-δ(+) neurons in vivo suggests that they correspond to physiologically identified units that are inhibited by the conditioned stimulus, called CEl(off) units. This correspondence, together with behavioural data, defines an inhibitory microcircuit in CEl that gates CEm output to control the level of conditioned freezing.
- Published
- 2010