Rewrite or overwrite - Identifying neuronal circuits of remote fear memory attenuation
Munich Psychiatry Lecture Series | MPLS
- Date: Dec 20, 2016
- Time: 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Johannes Gräff
- École Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne EPFL, CH
- Location: Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry
- Room: Lecture Hall
- Host: Jan Deussing
Despite the fact that traumatic memories are often not readily amenable to immediate intervention, surprisingly few studies have investigated treatment options for remote, i.e. long-lasting traumata in animal models. The few that have unanimously concluded that exposure therapy-based treatments, the most successful behavioral intervention for the attenuation of recent traumata in humans, fail to effectively reduce remote fear memories. We have recently described a pharmacological approach, by which even remote fear memories become amenable to attenuation1: By combining exposure therapy-like approached with histone deacetylase inhibitors in mice, chromatin-templated neuroplasticity could be reinstated, which resulted in persistent fear reduction.
Currently, we are in the process of investigating the cellular and molecular underpinnings of this finding in a cell type-specific manner using a transgenic mouse2 that allows for the visualization of fear memory traces. The aim of this study is to determine whether successful attenuation of remote fear memories is represented by a new memory trace of safety or by a re-learning of the original memory trace of fear.