TY  - JOUR
A1  - Salinas-Hernández, Ximena I.
A1  - Vogel, Pascal
A1  - Betz, Sebastian
A1  - Kalisch, Raffael
A1  - Sigurdsson, Torfi
A1  - Duvarci, Sevil
T1  - Dopamine neurons drive fear extinction learning by signaling the omission of expected aversive outcomes
T2  - eLife
N2  - Extinction of fear responses is critical for adaptive behavior and deficits in this form of safety learning are hallmark of anxiety disorders. However, the neuronal mechanisms that initiate extinction learning are largely unknown. Here we show, using single-unit electrophysiology and cell-type specific fiber photometry, that dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) are activated by the omission of the aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) during fear extinction. This dopamine signal occurred specifically during the beginning of extinction when the US omission is unexpected, and correlated strongly with extinction learning. Furthermore, temporally-specific optogenetic inhibition or excitation of dopamine neurons at the time of the US omission revealed that this dopamine signal is both necessary for, and sufficient to accelerate, normal fear extinction learning. These results identify a prediction error-like neuronal signal that is necessary to initiate fear extinction and reveal a crucial role of DA neurons in this form of safety learning.
KW  - Research article
KW  - Neuroscience
KW  - Dopamine
KW  - Fear conditioning
KW  - Extinction
KW  - Safety learning
KW  - Mouse
Y1  - 2018
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/48990
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-489906
SN  - 2050-084X
N1  - Copyright Salinas-Hernández et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
VL  - 7
IS  - e38818
SP  - 1
EP  - 25
PB  - eLife Sciences Publications
CY  - Cambridge
ER  -