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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...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2020
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7156682 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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