%0 Journal Article
%A Hasan, Mazahir T
%A Althammer, Ferdinand
%A Silva da Gouveia, Miriam
%A Goyon, Stephanie
%A Eliava, Marina
%A Lefevre, Arthur
%A Kerspern, Damien
%A Schimmer, Jonas
%A Raftogianni, Androniki
%A Wahis, Jerome
%A Knobloch-Bollmann, H Sophie
%A Tang, Yan
%A Liu, Xinying
%A Jain, Apar
%A Chavant, Virginie
%A Goumon, Yannick
%A Weislogel, Jan-Marek
%A Hurlemann, René
%A Herpertz, Sabine C
%A Pitzer, Claudia
%A Darbon, Pascal
%A Dogbevia, Godwin K
%A Bertocchi, Ilaria
%A Larkum, Matthew E
%A Sprengel, Rolf
%A Bading, Hilmar
%A Charlet, Alexandre
%A Grinevich, Valery
%T A Fear Memory Engram and Its Plasticity in the Hypothalamic Oxytocin System.
%J Neuron
%V 103
%N 1
%@ 0896-6273
%C New York, NY
%I Elsevier
%M DKFZ-2019-01225
%P 133-146.e8
%D 2019
%X Oxytocin (OT) release by axonal terminals onto the central nucleus of the amygdala exerts anxiolysis. To investigate which subpopulation of OT neurons contributes to this effect, we developed a novel method: virus-delivered genetic activity-induced tagging of cell ensembles (vGATE). With the vGATE method, we identified and permanently tagged a small subpopulation of OT cells, which, by optogenetic stimulation, strongly attenuated contextual fear-induced freezing, and pharmacogenetic silencing of tagged OT neurons impaired context-specific fear extinction, demonstrating that the tagged OT neurons are sufficient and necessary, respectively, to control contextual fear. Intriguingly, OT cell terminals of fear-experienced rats displayed enhanced glutamate release in the amygdala. Furthermore, rats exposed to another round of fear conditioning displayed 5-fold more activated magnocellular OT neurons in a novel environment than a familiar one, possibly for a generalized fear response. Thus, our results provide first evidence that hypothalamic OT neurons represent a fear memory engram.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)16
%9 Journal Article
%$ pmid:31104950
%R 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.04.029
%U https://inrepo02.dkfz.de/record/143651