Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, School of Basic Medical Science, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan Province 410013, China.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Feb 20;33(5):1814-1825. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac174.
Exposure therapy is the most effective approach of behavioral therapy for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But fear is easy to reappear even after successful extinction. So, identifying novel strategies for augmenting exposure therapy is rather important. It was reported that exercise had beneficial effects on cognitive and memory deficits. However, whether exercise could affect fear memory, especially for fear extinction remained elusive. Here, our results showed that exposure to acute mild exercise 1 or 2 h before extinction training can augment recent fear extinction retention and 2 h for the remote fear extinction retention. These beneficial effects could be attributed to increased YTHDF1 expression in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Furthermore, by using an AAV-shRNA-based approach to silence YTHDF1 expression via stereotactic injection in prelimbic cortex (PL) or infralimbic cortex (IL), respectively, we demonstrated that silence YTHDF1 in IL, but not in PL, blunted augmentation of exposure therapy induced by acute mild exercise and accompanied with decreased NR2B and GluR1 expression. Moreover, YTHDF1 modulated dendritic spines remodeling of pyramidal neuron in IL. Collectively, our findings suggested that acute mild exercise acted as an effective strategy in augmenting exposure therapy with possible implications for understanding new treatment underlying PTSD.
暴露疗法是治疗焦虑和创伤后应激障碍(PTSD)的最有效行为疗法。但即使在成功的消除后,恐惧也很容易再次出现。因此,寻找增强暴露疗法的新策略非常重要。有报道称,运动对认知和记忆缺陷有有益的影响。然而,运动是否会影响恐惧记忆,特别是对恐惧的消除,目前仍不清楚。在这里,我们的研究结果表明,在消退训练前 1 或 2 小时进行急性轻度运动,可以增强近期恐惧消退的保持,而 2 小时则可以增强远期恐惧消退的保持。这些有益的效果可以归因于内侧前额叶皮质(mPFC)中 YTHDF1 表达的增加。此外,通过使用 AAV-shRNA 方法分别通过立体定向注射在额前皮质(PL)或下边缘皮质(IL)中沉默 YTHDF1 的表达,我们证明了在 IL 中沉默 YTHDF1 会削弱急性轻度运动对暴露疗法的增强作用,同时伴随着 NR2B 和 GluR1 表达的减少。此外,YTHDF1 调节了 IL 中锥体神经元树突棘的重塑。总之,我们的研究结果表明,急性轻度运动是增强暴露疗法的有效策略,可能对理解 PTSD 的新治疗方法有一定的启示。