Sound tuning of amygdala plasticity in auditory fear conditioning

Sungmo Park, Junuk Lee, Kyungjoon Park, Jeongyeon Kim, Beomjong Song, Ingie Hong, Jieun Kim, Sukwon Lee, Sukwoo Choi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

Various auditory tones have been used as conditioned stimuli (CS) for fear conditioning, but researchers have largely neglected the effect that different types of auditory tones may have on fear memory processing. Here, we report that at lateral amygdala (LA) synapses (a storage site for fear memory), conditioning with different types of auditory CSs (2.8 kHz tone, white noise, FM tone) recruits distinct forms of long-term potentiation (LTP) and inserts calcium permeable AMPA receptor (CP-AMPAR) for variable periods. White noise or FM tone conditioning produced brief insertion (<6 hr after conditioning) of CP-AMPARs, whereas 2.8 kHz tone conditioning induced more persistent insertion (≥6 hr). Consistently, conditioned fear to 2.8 kHz tone but not to white noise or FM tones was erased by reconsolidation-update (which depends on the insertion of CP-AMPARs at LA synapses) when it was performed 6 hr after conditioning. Our data suggest that conditioning with different auditory CSs recruits distinct forms of LA synaptic plasticity, resulting in more malleable fear memory to some tones than to others.

Original languageEnglish
Article number31069
JournalScientific Reports
Volume6
DOIs
StatePublished - 4 Aug 2016

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