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Shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update

Aversive memories are at the heart of psychiatric disorders such as phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Here, we present a new behavioral approach in rats that robustly attenuates aversive memories. This method consists of ‘deconditioning’ animals previously trained to associate a ton...

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Autores principales: Popik, Bruno, Amorim, Felippe Espinelli, Amaral, Olavo B, De Oliveira Alvares, Lucas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7021486/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31999254
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.51207
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author Popik, Bruno
Amorim, Felippe Espinelli
Amaral, Olavo B
De Oliveira Alvares, Lucas
author_facet Popik, Bruno
Amorim, Felippe Espinelli
Amaral, Olavo B
De Oliveira Alvares, Lucas
author_sort Popik, Bruno
collection PubMed
description Aversive memories are at the heart of psychiatric disorders such as phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Here, we present a new behavioral approach in rats that robustly attenuates aversive memories. This method consists of ‘deconditioning’ animals previously trained to associate a tone with a strong footshock by replacing it with a much weaker one during memory retrieval. Our results indicate that deconditioning-update is more effective than traditional extinction in reducing fear responses; moreover, such effects are long lasting and resistant to renewal and spontaneous recovery. Remarkably, this strategy overcame important boundary conditions for memory updating, such as remote or very strong traumatic memories. The same beneficial effect was found in other types of fear-related memories. Deconditioning was mediated by L-type voltage-gated calcium channels and is consistent with computational accounts of mismatch-induced memory updating. Our results suggest that shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update is a promising approach to attenuate traumatic memories.
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spelling pubmed-70214862020-02-18 Shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update Popik, Bruno Amorim, Felippe Espinelli Amaral, Olavo B De Oliveira Alvares, Lucas eLife Neuroscience Aversive memories are at the heart of psychiatric disorders such as phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Here, we present a new behavioral approach in rats that robustly attenuates aversive memories. This method consists of ‘deconditioning’ animals previously trained to associate a tone with a strong footshock by replacing it with a much weaker one during memory retrieval. Our results indicate that deconditioning-update is more effective than traditional extinction in reducing fear responses; moreover, such effects are long lasting and resistant to renewal and spontaneous recovery. Remarkably, this strategy overcame important boundary conditions for memory updating, such as remote or very strong traumatic memories. The same beneficial effect was found in other types of fear-related memories. Deconditioning was mediated by L-type voltage-gated calcium channels and is consistent with computational accounts of mismatch-induced memory updating. Our results suggest that shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update is a promising approach to attenuate traumatic memories. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC7021486/ /pubmed/31999254 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.51207 Text en © 2020, Popik et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Popik, Bruno
Amorim, Felippe Espinelli
Amaral, Olavo B
De Oliveira Alvares, Lucas
Shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update
title Shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update
title_full Shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update
title_fullStr Shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update
title_full_unstemmed Shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update
title_short Shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update
title_sort shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7021486/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31999254
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.51207
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