Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Shang, Congping
• Liu, Zhihui
• Chen, Zijun
• Shi, Yingchao
• Wang, Qian
• Liu, Su
• Li, Dapeng
• Cao, Peng

Titel

BRAIN CIRCUITS. A parvalbumin-positive excitatory visual pathway to trigger fear responses in mice

Ist Teil von

• Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 2015-06, Vol.348 (6242), p.1472-1477

Ort / Verlag

United States

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The fear responses to environmental threats play a fundamental role in survival. Little is known about the neural circuits specifically processing threat-relevant sensory information in the mammalian brain. We identified parvalbumin-positive (PV(+)) excitatory projection neurons in mouse superior colliculus (SC) as a key neuronal subtype for detecting looming objects and triggering fear responses. These neurons, distributed predominantly in the superficial SC, divergently projected to different brain areas, including the parabigeminal nucleus (PBGN), an intermediate station leading to the amygdala. Activation of the PV(+) SC-PBGN pathway triggered fear responses, induced conditioned aversion, and caused depression-related behaviors. Approximately 20% of mice subjected to the fear-conditioning paradigm developed a generalized fear memory.