Dataset Information

Brain oxytocin in social fear conditioning and its extinction: involvement of the lateral septum.

ABSTRACT: Central oxytocin (OXT) has anxiolytic and pro-social properties both in humans and rodents, and has been proposed as a therapeutic option for anxiety and social dysfunctions. Here, we utilized a mouse model of social fear conditioning (SFC) to study the effects of OXT on social fear, and to determine whether SFC causes alterations in central OXT receptor (OXTR) binding and local OXT release. Central infusion of OXT, but not arginine vasopressin, prior to social fear extinction training completely abolished social fear expression in an OXTR-mediated fashion without affecting general anxiety or locomotion. SFC caused increased OXTR binding in the dorso-lateral septum (DLS), central amygdala, dentate gyrus, and cornu ammunis 1, which normalized after social fear extinction, suggesting that these areas form part of a brain network involved in the development and neural support of social fear. Microdialysis revealed that the increase in OXT release observed in unconditioned mice within the DLS during social fear extinction training was attenuated in conditioned mice. Consequently, increasing the availability of local OXT by infusion of OXT into the DLS reversed social fear. Thus, alterations in the brain OXT system, including altered OXTR binding and OXT release within the DLS, play an important role in SFC and social fear extinction. Thus, we suggest that the OXT system is adversely affected in disorders associated with social fear, such as social anxiety disorder and reinstalling an appropriate balance of the OXT system may alleviate some of the symptoms.

SUBMITTER: Zoicas I

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4229574 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Brain oxytocin in social fear conditioning and its extinction: involvement of the lateral septum.

Zoicas Iulia I Slattery David A DA Neumann Inga D ID

Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology 20140626 13

Central oxytocin (OXT) has anxiolytic and pro-social properties both in humans and rodents, and has been proposed as a therapeutic option for anxiety and social dysfunctions. Here, we utilized a mouse model of social fear conditioning (SFC) to study the effects of OXT on social fear, and to determine whether SFC causes alterations in central OXT receptor (OXTR) binding and local OXT release. Central infusion of OXT, but not arginine vasopressin, prior to social fear extinction training completel ...[more]

PMID: 24964815

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Project description:The extinction of contextual fear is commonly an essential requirement for successful exposure therapy for fear disorders. However, experimental work on extinction of contextual fear is limited, and there little or no directly relevant theoretical work. Here, we extend BACON, a neurocomputational model of context fear conditioning that provides plausible explanations for a number of aspects of context fear conditioning, to deal with extinction (calling the model BaconX). In this model, contextual representations are formed in the hippocampus and association of fear to them occurs in the amygdala. Representation creation, conditionability, and development of between-session extinction are controlled by degree of confidence (assessed by the Bayesian weight of evidence) that an active contextual representation is in fact that of the current context (i.e., is "valid"). The model predicts that: (1) extinction which persists between sessions will occur only if at a sessions end there is high confidence that the active representation is valid. It follows that the shorter the context placement-to-US (shock) interval ("PSI") and the less is therefore learned about context, the longer extinction sessions must be for enduring extinction to occur, while too short PSIs will preclude successful extinction. (2) Short-PSI deficits can be rescued by contextual exposure even after conditioning has occurred. (3) Learning to discriminate well between a conditioned and similar safe context requires representations of each to form, which may not occur if PSI was too short. (4) Extinction-causing inhibition must be applied downstream of the conditioning locus for reasonable generalization properties to be generated. (5) Context change tends to cause return of extinguished contextual fear. (6). Extinction carried out in the conditioning context generalizes better than extinction executed in contexts to which fear has generalized (as done in exposure therapy). (7) BaconX suggests novel approaches to exposure therapy.

Dataset Information

Brain oxytocin in social fear conditioning and its extinction: involvement of the lateral septum.

Publications

Brain oxytocin in social fear conditioning and its extinction: involvement of the lateral septum.

Similar Datasets

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