Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience, Center for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, IdISSC, Madrid, Spain.
Epilepsy Unit, Department of Neurology, Hospital Ruber Internacional, Madrid, Spain.
Nat Commun. 2022 Oct 27;13(1):6403. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-33828-2.
Memory for aversive events is central to survival but can become maladaptive in psychiatric disorders. Memory enhancement for emotional events is thought to depend on amygdala modulation of hippocampal activity. However, the neural dynamics of amygdala-hippocampal communication during emotional memory encoding remain unknown. Using simultaneous intracranial recordings from both structures in human patients, here we show that successful emotional memory encoding depends on the amygdala theta phase to which hippocampal gamma activity and neuronal firing couple. The phase difference between subsequently remembered vs. not-remembered emotional stimuli translates to a time period that enables lagged coherence between amygdala and downstream hippocampal gamma. These results reveal a mechanism whereby amygdala theta phase coordinates transient amygdala -hippocampal gamma coherence to facilitate aversive memory encoding. Pacing of lagged gamma coherence via amygdala theta phase may represent a general mechanism through which the amygdala relays emotional content to distant brain regions to modulate other aspects of cognition, such as attention and decision-making.
对厌恶事件的记忆对于生存至关重要，但在精神障碍中可能变得适应不良。人们认为，对情绪事件的记忆增强取决于杏仁核对海马体活动的调节。然而，情绪记忆编码期间杏仁核-海马体通讯的神经动力学仍然未知。在这里，我们使用来自人类患者的两个结构的同步颅内记录，表明成功的情绪记忆编码取决于海马体γ活动和神经元放电与杏仁核θ相位耦合的杏仁核θ相位。随后记住的情绪刺激与未记住的情绪刺激之间的相位差转化为一个时间段，使得杏仁核和下游海马体γ之间的滞后相干性成为可能。这些结果揭示了一种机制，即杏仁核θ相位协调短暂的杏仁核-海马体γ相干性，以促进厌恶记忆编码。通过杏仁核θ相位来调节滞后γ相干性可能代表一种普遍的机制，通过该机制，杏仁核对远距离脑区传递情绪内容，以调节注意力和决策等其他认知方面。
