AUTHOR=Ritger Alexandra C. , Parker Rachel K. , Trask Sydney , Ferrara Nicole C. TITLE=Elevated fear states facilitate ventral hippocampal engagement of basolateral amygdala neuronal activity JOURNAL=Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience VOLUME=18 YEAR=2024 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1347525 DOI=10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1347525 ISSN=1662-5153 ABSTRACT=
Fear memory formation and retention rely on the activation of distributed neural circuits. The basolateral amygdala (BLA) and ventral hippocampus (VH) in particular are two regions that support contextual fear memory processes and share reciprocal connections. The VH → BLA pathway is critical for increases in fear after initial learning, in both fear renewal following extinction learning and during fear generalization. This raises the possibility that functional changes in VH projections to the BLA support increases in learned fear. In line with this, fear can also be increased with alterations to the original content of the memory via reconsolidation, as in fear elevation procedures. However, very little is known about the functional changes in the VH → BLA pathway supporting reconsolidation-related increases in fear. In this study, we used