Fearful Encounters

When we perceive a threat to our safety, fight or flight can be crucial to keeping us alive. The brain’s central amygdala then kicks in to help us learn from the experience and remember what to do if we encounter the same scenario again. However, this ‘fear learning’ doesn’t always function appropriately – people suffering from anxiety, for example, can experience overactive fear responses. In a quest to better understand the brain circuits involved in fear learning, scientists uncovered previously unknown connections between a group of central amygdala neurons (in green) and cells in the globus pallidus, a region of the brain responsible for controlling movement. When these connections were blocked, mice were unable to learn that a specific sound led to a painful sensation. Better understanding this neural circuit that helps us learn which dangerous situations to avoid may in future lead us to develop new treatments for anxiety disorders.

Written by Gaëlle Coullon

Gaëlle Coullon

Writer

Gaëlle is a consultant and trainer in research communication and commercialisation. As an ex-neuroscientist, she is always looking for new ways to combine her love of writing with everything brain related.

• Image by the Li lab, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
• School of Biological Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Journal of Neuroscience, November 2020