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Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function

The increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is observed in women may involve sex differences in learned fear inhibition and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) function. PTSD is characterized by fear overgeneralization involving impaired fear regulation by safety signals. We r...

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Autores principales: Day, Harriet L. L., Suwansawang, Sopapun, Halliday, David M., Stevenson, Carl W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7156682/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32286467
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63405-w
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author Day, Harriet L. L.
Suwansawang, Sopapun
Halliday, David M.
Stevenson, Carl W.
author_facet Day, Harriet L. L.
Suwansawang, Sopapun
Halliday, David M.
Stevenson, Carl W.
author_sort Day, Harriet L. L.
collection PubMed
description The increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is observed in women may involve sex differences in learned fear inhibition and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) function. PTSD is characterized by fear overgeneralization involving impaired fear regulation by safety signals. We recently found that males show fear discrimination and females show fear generalization involving reduced safety signalling after extended fear discrimination training. Here we determined if these sex differences involve altered mPFC function. Male and female rats underwent three days of auditory fear discrimination training, where one tone (CS+) was paired with footshock and another tone (CS−) was presented alone. Local field potentials were recorded from prelimbic (PL) and infralimbic (IL) mPFC during retrieval. We found that males discriminated and females generalized based on cue-induced freezing at retrieval. This was accompanied by sex differences in basal theta and gamma oscillations in PL and IL. Importantly, males also showed PL/IL theta activation during safety signalling by the CS− and IL gamma activation in response to the threat-related CS+, both of which were absent in females. These results add to growing evidence indicating that sex differences in learned fear inhibition are associated with altered mPFC function.
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spelling pubmed-71566822020-04-19 Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function Day, Harriet L. L. Suwansawang, Sopapun Halliday, David M. Stevenson, Carl W. Sci Rep Article The increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is observed in women may involve sex differences in learned fear inhibition and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) function. PTSD is characterized by fear overgeneralization involving impaired fear regulation by safety signals. We recently found that males show fear discrimination and females show fear generalization involving reduced safety signalling after extended fear discrimination training. Here we determined if these sex differences involve altered mPFC function. Male and female rats underwent three days of auditory fear discrimination training, where one tone (CS+) was paired with footshock and another tone (CS−) was presented alone. Local field potentials were recorded from prelimbic (PL) and infralimbic (IL) mPFC during retrieval. We found that males discriminated and females generalized based on cue-induced freezing at retrieval. This was accompanied by sex differences in basal theta and gamma oscillations in PL and IL. Importantly, males also showed PL/IL theta activation during safety signalling by the CS− and IL gamma activation in response to the threat-related CS+, both of which were absent in females. These results add to growing evidence indicating that sex differences in learned fear inhibition are associated with altered mPFC function. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-04-14 /pmc/articles/PMC7156682/ /pubmed/32286467 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63405-w Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Day, Harriet L. L.
Suwansawang, Sopapun
Halliday, David M.
Stevenson, Carl W.
Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function
title Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function
title_full Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function
title_fullStr Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function
title_full_unstemmed Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function
title_short Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function
title_sort sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7156682/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32286467
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63405-w
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