Amygdala Depotentiation and Fear Extinction

Auditory fear memory is thought to be maintained by fear conditioning-induced potentiation of synaptic efficacy. The conditioning-induced potentiation has been shown to be maintained, at least in part, by enhanced expression of surface AMPA receptor (AMPAR) at excitatory synapses in the lateral amygdala (LA). Depotentiation, reversal of conditioning-induced potentiation, has been proposed as a cellular mechanism for fear extinction. However, a direct link between depotentiation and extinction has not yet been tested. To address this, we applied both ex vivo and in vivo approaches to rats in which fear memory had been consolidated. We found a novel form of ex vivo depotentiation; the depotentiation reversed conditioning-induced potentiation at thalamic input synapses onto the LA (T-LA synapses) ex vivo, and it could be induced only when both NMDA and metabotropic glutamate receptors were co-activated. Extinction returned the enhanced T-LA synaptic efficacy observed in conditioned rats to baseline and occluded the depotentiation. Consistently, extinction reversed conditioning-induced enhancement of surface expression of AMPAR subunits in LA synaptosomal preparations. A GluR2-derived peptide that blocks regulated AMPAR endocytosis inhibited depotentiation, and microinjection of a cell-permeable form of the peptide into the LA attenuated extinction. Our results are consistent with the use of depotentiation to weaken potentiated synaptic inputs onto the LA during extinction, and they provide strong evidence that AMPAR removal at excitatory synapses in the LA underlies extinction. The results described here are in line with previous findings. Neural activity in the LA has been shown to decrease after extinction in the rat and human. The NMDAR dependency of the depotentiation fits nicely with a large body of evidence that fear extinction depends upon amygdala NMDARs. Similarly, blockade of metabotropic glutamate recepotrs in the LA has recently been shown to attenuate fear extinction.