Research Examines Why the Memory of Fear is Seared Into Our Brains
Experiencing a frightening incident is likely something you will always remember. Why does it remain with you when other kinds of events become increasingly hard to remember with time?
A mechanism for the formation of fear memories in the amygdala, the emotional center of the brains, has been identified by a team of neuroscientists from Engineering and Tufts University School of Medicine and the Tulane University School of Science.
By studying the role of the stress neurotransmitter norepinephrine (also known as noradrenaline), the scientists discovered that it enhances fear processing in the brain by stimulating a specific group of inhibitory neurons in the amygdala, resulting in a recurring pattern of electrical discharges.
This pattern of electrical activity alters the frequency of brain wave oscillation in the amygdala, moving it from a state of rest to one of excitement that supports the formation of fear memories.
Illustration of how our brains work when faced with a robbery
Released recently in Nature Communications, the study was guided by Tulane cell and molecular biology lecturer Jeffrey Tasker, the Catherine and Hunter Pierson Chair in Neuroscience, and his PhD student Xin Fu.
Tasker utilized the illustration of an armed robbery. “If you are stood up at gunpoint, your brain produces a lot of the stress neurotransmitter norepinephrine, comparable to an adrenaline rush,” he stated.
“This alters the electrical discharge pattern in particular circuits in your emotional brain, fixed in the center of the amygdala, which in turn transitions the brain to heightened arousal that promotes memory formation and fear memory since it is frightening. This coincides process, we believe, that goes awry in PTSD and makes it so you can not neglect terrible experiences.”.
This study was led by Tasker’s lab and was performed in collaboration with the Jonathan Fadok laboratory of Tulane and the Jamie Maguire laboratory of Tufts. Fadok is a cooperator professor of psychology, the person who holds the Burk-Kleinpeter Inc. Professorship in Science and Engineering at Tulane. Maguire is an associate lecturer of neuroscience at the Tufts School of Medicine.
Read the original article on Sciencedaily.
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