Chemogenetic activation of the ventral subiculum–BNST pathway reduces context fear expression
- 1Department of Biology, Barnard College of Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA
- 2Department of Neuroscience and Behavior, Barnard College of Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA
- Corresponding author: ebauer{at}barnard.edu
-
↵3 These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
An inability to reduce fear in nonthreatening environments characterizes many anxiety disorders. The pathway from the ventral subiculum (vSUB) to the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is more active in safe contexts than in aversive ones, as indexed by FOS expression. Here, we used chemogenetic techniques to specifically activate the vSUB–BNST pathway during both context and cued fear expression by expressing a Cre-dependent hM3D(Gq) receptor in BNST-projecting vSUB neurons. Activation of the vSUB–BNST pathway reduced context but not cued fear expression. These data suggest that the vSUB–BNST pathway contributes to behavioral responses to nonaversive contexts.
Footnotes
-
Article is online at http://www.learnmem.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/lm.053797.123.
- Received May 26, 2023.
- Accepted August 3, 2023.
This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first 12 months after the full-issue publication date (see http://learnmem.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After 12 months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
