Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, 75390, USA.
Department of Anatomy, Midwestern University, Downers Grove, IL, 60615, USA.
Nat Commun. 2023 Jul 5;14(1):3976. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-39718-5.
Observers learn to fear the context in which they witnessed a demonstrator's aversive experience, called observational contextual fear conditioning (CFC). The neural mechanisms governing whether recall of the observational CFC memory occurs from the observer's own or from the demonstrator's point of view remain unclear. Here, we show in male mice that recent observational CFC memory is recalled in the observer's context only, but remote memory is recalled in both observer and demonstrator contexts. Recall of recent memory in the observer's context requires dorsal hippocampus activity, while recall of remote memory in both contexts requires the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)-basolateral amygdala pathway. Although mPFC neurons activated by observational CFC are involved in remote recall in both contexts, distinct mPFC subpopulations regulate remote recall in each context. Our data provide insights into a flexible recall strategy and the functional reorganization of circuits and memory engram cells underlying observational CFC memory.
观察者学会害怕他们目睹示教者痛苦经历的环境，这被称为观察性情境恐惧条件反射（CFC）。控制观察者是否从自己或从示教者的角度回忆观察性 CFC 记忆的神经机制仍不清楚。在这里，我们在雄性小鼠中表明，最近的观察性 CFC 记忆仅在观察者的环境中被回忆，但远程记忆在观察者和示教者的环境中都被回忆。在观察者的环境中回忆最近的记忆需要背侧海马体的活动，而在两个环境中回忆远程记忆则需要内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）-基底外侧杏仁核通路。尽管通过观察性 CFC 激活的 mPFC 神经元参与了两个环境中的远程回忆，但不同的 mPFC 亚群在每个环境中调节远程回忆。我们的数据为观察性 CFC 记忆背后的灵活回忆策略和回路以及记忆印痕细胞的功能重组提供了深入了解。
