Fear-extinction mediated by auditory cortex ligands

[LaTorre]

Hi, fear learning paradigm relies on a classical pavlovian conditioning which associates a neutral sound with an aversive stimuls (eg an electric current). After LTP, you can induce a retrivial of the fear memory. In fact, just by presenting the sound to the animal, you will observe behavioral fear-response even wihtout the somministration of the avversive stimulus.
The main regions involved in such a response are amigdala and sensory cortices.

Prefrontal areas are correlated with fear-extinction protocols.

However, by injecting nicotine locally to auditory cortices we can see a relief of fear-response when the

I'm wondering if there are other substances i can use locally in auditory coritces to remove the association between the US (unconditioned stimuls) and the CS (conditioned stimulus), so that the rat when hearing the sound again will not shows the fear-response.

I'm wondering if serotoninergics will impair or less this action, does anyone have clues?

 

[The Neural]

Hi Contafinoasette,

Off the top of my head, serotonergic activation through exogenous administration of substances tends to desensitize long-term potentiated synapses (perforated). This may be the mechanism behind psychotherapy with psilocybin or mdma, because the patient has the potential to revisit whatever he is aiming for, without causing the whole fear circuit, from the hippocampus to amygdala and back again, to re-activate in the same manner as before.

So to answer with a guess, I'd say serotonergics impair conditioning, or better put, facilitate willful LTP re-arrangement.

How are you planning to use it locally on auditory cortices? Interested.