Stress Enables Reinforcement-Elicited Serotonergic Consolidation of Fear Memory
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Author(s)
Baratta, Michael V.
Monahan, Patrick E.
Yao, Junmei
Weber, Michael D.
Lin, Pei-Ann
Gisabella, Barbara
Petrossian, Natalie
Amat, Jose
Kim, Kyungman
Yang, Aimei
Date Issued
July 2015
Journal
Biological Psychiatry
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Baratta, Michael V., Suhasa B. Kodandaramaiah, Patrick E. Monahan, Junmei Yao, Michael D. Weber, Pei-Ann Lin, Barbara Gisabella, et al. “Stress Enables Reinforcement-Elicited Serotonergic Consolidation of Fear Memory.” Biological Psychiatry 79, no. 10 (May 2016): 814–22.
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Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Background
Prior exposure to stress is a risk factor for developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to trauma, yet the mechanisms by which this occurs are unclear. Using a rodent model of stress-based susceptibility to PTSD, we investigated the role of serotonin in this phenomenon.
Methods
Adult mice were exposed to repeated immobilization stress or handling, and the role of serotonin in subsequent fear learning was assessed using pharmacologic manipulation and western blot detection of serotonin receptors, measurements of serotonin, high-speed optogenetic silencing, and behavior.
Results
Both dorsal raphe serotonergic activity during aversive reinforcement and amygdala serotonin 2C receptor (5-HT2CR) activity during memory consolidation were necessary for stress enhancement of fear memory, but neither process affected fear memory in unstressed mice. Additionally, prior stress increased amygdala sensitivity to serotonin by promoting surface expression of 5-HT2CR without affecting tissue levels of serotonin in the amygdala. We also showed that the serotonin that drives stress enhancement of associative cued fear memory can arise from paired or unpaired footshock, an effect not predicted by theoretical models of associative learning.
Conclusions
Stress bolsters the consequences of aversive reinforcement, not by simply enhancing the neurobiological signals used to encode fear in unstressed animals, but rather by engaging distinct mechanistic pathways. These results reveal that predictions from classical associative learning models do not always hold for stressed animals and suggest that 5-HT2CR blockade may represent a promising therapeutic target for psychiatric disorders characterized by excessive fear responses such as that observed in PTSD.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
MIT Intelligence Initiative
Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.06.025
