Fear extinction, the gradual reduction of conditioned fear in response to a previous threatening experience that no longer predicts danger, plays a crucial role in exposure-based therapies for anxiety and trauma-related disorders. Despite the efficacy of these therapies for many, a significant number of individuals encounter difficulties in extinguishing fear, resulting in treatment resistance. Understanding the mechanisms behind the variation in extinction success among individuals remains a central pursuit in neuroscience. Recent studies have identified dopamine (DA) neurons within the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to influence the extinction process. In addition to their well-established role in signaling reward prediction errors, specific populations of VTA DA neurons also respond to the unexpected omission of an aversive stimulus, producing a signal indicative of safety. In animals capable of successful extinction, this burst of activity associated with stimulus omission diminishes over time, signalin...

The Neuroscience Scholars Program is a two-year training program open to underrepresented graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Building on 40 years of historic engagement, the program supports annual travel awards, mentoring, and the professional development of NSP Fellows and Associates. All materials available in this archive are provided open access to the field and are supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The contents of this series are solely the responsibility of the Society for Neuroscience and do not necessarily reflect the official views of NINDS. Learn more about the Neuroscience Scholars Program. Program Year 2022–2023

Join this interactive session as Dr. Ranier Gutierrez discusses his paper, “ Optoception: Perception of Optogenetic Brain Perturbations ” with eNeuro Editor-in-Chief Christophe Bernard. Attendees can submit questions at registration and live during the webinar.

The life cycle of the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans involves a choice between two alternative developmental trajectories. Hermaphroditic larvae can either become reproductive adults or, under conditions of crowding or low food availability, enter a long-term, stress-resistant diapause known as the dauer stage. Chemical signals from a secreted larval pheromone promote the dauer trajectory in a concentration-dependent manner, and their influence can be antagonised by increased availability of a microbial food source. The decision is known to be under neuronal control, involving both sensory and interneurons. However, little is known about the dynamics of the underlying circuit, and the circuit mechanisms by which short-term fluctuations in the ratio of food and pheromone experienced by individual larvae are remembered and averaged over several hours. To investigate this, we quantitatively characterized the neuronal responses to food and pheromone inputs by measuring calcium traces from ASI and AIA ne...

Nicole Jenni and Stan Floresco discuss their paper, “Distinct Medial Orbitofrontal–Striatal Circuits Support Dissociable Component Processes of Risk/Reward Decision-Making,” published in Vol. 42, Issue 13 of JNeurosci, with reviewing editor Kate Wassum. 

Rebecca Shansky’s research investigates sexual dimorphism in fear circuitry using rodent models. Shansky’s lab integrates sophisticated behavioral analyses with high-resolution fluorescent microscopy to identify sex-specific patterns of fear expression, learning, and structural plasticity. She will discuss the challenges and surprises she’s encountered as a sex differences-focused behavioral neuroscientist, as well as her current advocacy for sex equity in animal research.

The nigrostriatal and mesoaccumbal dopamine systems are thought to contribute to changes in behavior and learning during adolescence, yet it is unclear how the rise in gonadal hormones at puberty impacts the function of these systems. We studied the impact of prepubertal gonadectomy on later evoked dopamine release in male Mus spicilegus , a mouse whose adolescent life history has been carefully characterized in the wild and laboratory. To examine how puberty impacts the dopamine systems in M. spicilegus males, we removed the gonads prepubertally at P25 and then examined evoked dopamine release in the dorsomedial, dorsolateral, and nucleus accumbens core regions of striatal slices at P60-70 (late adolescence/early adulthood). To measure dopamine release, we used near-infrared catecholamine nanosensors (nIRCats) which enable study of spatial distribution of dopamine release. We found that prepubertal gonadectomy led to a significantly reduced density of dopamine release sites and reduced dopamine release at...

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Alpha peak frequency (APF) is defined as a prominent spectral peak within the 8-12 Hz frequency range. Typically, an individual’s alpha frequency is regarded as a stable neurophysiological marker. A wealth of recent evidence, however, indicates that APF shifts within short timescales in relation to task demands and even spontaneously so. Further, brain stimulation studies often report shifts in APF both within and between experimental sessions, directly contradicting the idea of a stable APF. To characterise the non-stationarities in spectral parameters, we estimated APFs from one-second epochs of resting-state magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings from healthy adults of either sex. To enhance signal-to-noise ratio, without compromising on temporal resolution, we averaged power spectra within parcelled regions. Our findings indicate that variation in APFs exacerbates along the posterior-to-anterior cortical plane i.e., from the occipital to the frontal cortices. Further, by comparisons with amplitude-mat...

Candler Paige and Ted Price discuss their paper, “A Female-Specific Role for Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP) in Rodent Pain Models,” published in Vol. 42, Issue 10 of JNeurosci, with Editor-in-Chief Marina Picciotto.