ICLM Journal Club
This Week
Date: 07 March 2014
Time: 09:30 am
Place : Gonda 2nd Floor Conference Room
Title: Mechanisms of fear sensitization caused by acute traumatic stress: from induction to expression to potential cure
Speaker: Jennifer Perusini
This is the second of this year's ICLM Junior Scientist Lecture Series.
Abstract: Inappropriate fear regulation after severe stress is a hallmark of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We developed a model called stress-enhanced fear learning (SEFL), in which an acute footshock stressor nonassociatively and permanently enhances conditional fear learning in rats. SEFL is accompanied by several additional symptoms relevant to PTSD. We demonstrate that corticosterone acting at glucocorticoid receptors in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) is necessary to induce SEFL. Moreover, we show that corticosterone drives long-term AMPA receptor (R) subunit, glutamate receptor 1 (GluA1), expression in the BLA. Infusing an AMPAR antagonist into the BLA after the stress temporarily prevented sensitized fear expression, while specifically targeting GluA1 synthesis in the BLA using antisense oligonucleotides post-stress produced a long-lasting reversal of SEFL. These results elucidate novel neurobiological mechanisms underlying sensitized behavioral responses observed in PTSD and further indicate that a single antisense treatment directed at AMPARs within the BLA surprisingly restores normal fear responding.
A background paper can be found here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763405000606
About Us
Introduction
The Integrative Center for Learning and Memory (ICLM) is a multidisciplinary center of UCLA labs devoted to understanding the neural basis of learning and memory and its disorders. This will require a unified approach across different levels of analysis, including;
1. Elucidating the molecular cellular and systems mechanisms that allow neurons and synapses to undergo the long-term changes that ultimately correspond to 'neural memories'.
2. Understanding how functional dynamics and computations emerge from complex circuits of neurons, and how plasticity governs these processes.
3. Describing the neural systems in which different forms of learning and memory take place, and how these systems interact to ultimately generate behavior and cognition.
History of ICLM
The Integrative Center for Learning and Memory formally LMP started in its current form in 1998, and has served as a platform for many interactions and collaborations within UCLA. A key event organized by the group is the weekly ICLM Journal Club. For more than 10 years, graduate students, postdocs, principal investigators, and invited speakers have presented on topics ranging from the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, through computational models of learning, to behavior and cognition. Dean Buonomano oversees the ICLM journal club with help of student/post doctoral organizers. For other events organized by ICLM go to http://www.iclm.ucla.edu/Events.html.
Current Organizer:
Past Organizers:
i) Anna Matynia(Aug 2004 - Jun 2008) (Silva Lab)
ii) Robert Brown (Aug 2008 - Jun 2009) (Balleine Lab)
iii) Balaji Jayaprakash (Aug 2008 - Nov 2011) (Silva Lab)
iv) Justin Shobe & Thomas Rogerson (Dec 2011 - June 2013) (Silva Lab)
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