AUTHOR=Flavell Charlotte R., Lambert Elliot , Winters Boyer D., Bredy Timothy W. TITLE=Mechanisms governing the reactivation-dependent destabilization of memories and their role in extinction JOURNAL=Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience VOLUME=7 YEAR=2013 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00214 DOI=10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00214 ISSN=1662-5153 ABSTRACT=

The extinction of learned associations has traditionally been considered to involve new learning, which competes with the original memory for control over behavior. However, a recent resurgence of interest in reactivation-dependent amnesia has revealed that the retrieval of fear-related memory (with what is essentially a brief extinction session) can result in its destabilization. This review discusses some of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that are involved in the destabilization of a memory following its reactivation and/or extinction, and investigates the evidence that extinction may involve both new learning as well as a partial destabilization-induced erasure of the original memory trace.