Will exceptionally take place at 11:00 - BMI Seminar // Synaptic encoding of associative fear memory in engram cell pathways

In associative fear learning, experimental subjects learn to associate a neutral sensory cue or context with an aversive stimulus and display fear responses to the cue or context that predicts danger. Recent studies have identified memory engram cells, a population of neurons that is activated by associative fear learning and whose reactivation results in fear memory recall. However, it remains unknown how memory engram cells in a distributed network are connected to one another, and how the synaptic strength of these connections (i.e. engram cell pathways) is modified to encode an associative fear memory. In this talk, I will discuss our recent findings on how selective strengthening of the engram cell pathways contributes to encoding a fear memory associated with an auditory cue or context.
 
Reference: Kim WB and Cho J-H (2017) Encoding of discriminative fear memory by input-specific LTP in the amygdala. Neuron, 95: 1129-1146