Representational dynamics during extinction of fear memories in the human brain
Pacheco Estefan, Daniel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Evolutiva i de l'Educació)
Bouyeure, Antoine (Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Abteilung für Neuropsychologie)
Jacob, George (Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Abteilung für Neuropsychologie)
Fellner, Marie-Christin (Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Abteilung für Neuropsychologie)
Lehongre, Katia (Institut du Cerveau et de la Moëlle épinière (París, França))
Lambrecq, Virginie (Institut du Cerveau et de la Moëlle épinière (París, França))
Frazzini, Valerio (Institut du Cerveau et de la Moëlle épinière (París, França))
Navarro, Vincent (Institut du Cerveau et de la Moëlle épinière (París, França))
Güntürkün, Onur (Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Department of Biopsychology)
Shen, Lu (Hua nan shi fan da xue)
Yang, Jing (Hua nan shi fan da xue)
Han, Biao (Hua nan shi fan da xue)
Chen, Qi (Hua nan shi fan da xue)
Axmacher, Nikolai (Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Abteilung für Neuropsychologie)

Data:	2025
Descripció:	28 pàg.
Resum:	Extinction learning-the suppression of a previously acquired fear response-is critical for adaptive behaviour and core for understanding the aetiology and treatment of anxiety disorders. Electrophysiological studies in rodents have revealed critical roles of theta (4-12 Hz) oscillations in amygdala and hippocampus during both fear learning and extinction, and engram research has shown that extinction relies on the formation of novel, highly context-dependent memory traces that suppress the initial fear memories. Whether similar processes occur in humans and how they relate to previously described neural mechanisms of episodic memory formation and retrieval remains unknown. Intracranial EEG recordings in epilepsy patients provide direct access to the deep brain structures of the fear and extinction network, while representational similarity analysis allows characterizing the memory traces of specific cues and contexts. Here we combined these methods to show that amygdala theta oscillations during extinction learning signal safety rather than threat and that extinction memory traces are characterized by stable and context-specific neural representations that are coordinated across the extinction network. We further demonstrate that context specificity during extinction learning predicts the reoccurrence of fear memory traces during a subsequent test period, while reoccurrence of extinction memory traces predicts safety responses. Our results reveal the neurophysiological mechanisms and representational characteristics of context-dependent extinction learning in the human brain. In addition, they show that the mutual competition of fear and extinction memory traces provides a mechanistic basis for clinically important phenomena such as fear renewal and extinction retrieval.
Nota:	Altres ajuts: Open access funding provided by Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Nota:	Altres ajuts: This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) through grant SFB 1280 (projects A01 and A02) project number 316803389. D.P.-E. received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC2023045254-I)
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Extinction learning ; Anxiety disorders ; Amygdala theta oscillations ; Fear memory
Publicat a:	Nature human behaviour, Vol. 10 (01 2026) , p. 29-48, ISSN 2397-3374
Obra relacionada:	Pacheco Estefan, Daniel [et al.]. «Publisher Correction : Representational dynamics during extinction of fear memories in the human brain». Nature human behaviour, Vol. 9 (September 2025), art. 2670 10.1038/s41562-025-02305-3

Correcció de l'article: https://ddd.uab.cat/record/326463
DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02268-5
PMID: 40764405

28 p, 7.4 MB

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