Harriet L. L. Day
Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function
Day, Harriet L. L.; Suwansawang, Sopapun; Halliday, David M.; Stevenson, Carl W.
Authors
Sopapun Suwansawang
David M. Halliday
Dr CARL STEVENSON carl.stevenson@nottingham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Abstract
© 2020, The Author(s). The increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is observed in women may involve sex differences in learned fear inhibition and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) function. PTSD is characterized by fear overgeneralization involving impaired fear regulation by safety signals. We recently found that males show fear discrimination and females show fear generalization involving reduced safety signalling after extended fear discrimination training. Here we determined if these sex differences involve altered mPFC function. Male and female rats underwent three days of auditory fear discrimination training, where one tone (CS+) was paired with footshock and another tone (CS−) was presented alone. Local field potentials were recorded from prelimbic (PL) and infralimbic (IL) mPFC during retrieval. We found that males discriminated and females generalized based on cue-induced freezing at retrieval. This was accompanied by sex differences in basal theta and gamma oscillations in PL and IL. Importantly, males also showed PL/IL theta activation during safety signalling by the CS− and IL gamma activation in response to the threat-related CS+, both of which were absent in females. These results add to growing evidence indicating that sex differences in learned fear inhibition are associated with altered mPFC function.
Citation
Day, H. L. L., Suwansawang, S., Halliday, D. M., & Stevenson, C. W. (2020). Sex differences in auditory fear discrimination are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex function. Scientific Reports, 10(1), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63405-w
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Mar 28, 2020 |
Online Publication Date | Apr 14, 2020 |
Publication Date | 2020-12 |
Deposit Date | Apr 3, 2020 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 29, 2024 |
Journal | Scientific Reports |
Print ISSN | 2045-2322 |
Electronic ISSN | 2045-2322 |
Publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 10 |
Issue | 1 |
Article Number | 6300 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63405-w |
Keywords | Multidisciplinary |
Public URL | https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4246053 |
Publisher URL | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63405-w |
Files
s41598-020-63405-w
(5 Mb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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