Neural Oscillations Underlying The Extinction of Conditioned Fear Memory

Abstract

As part of the self-protection mechanism that individuals use to deal with internal and external risk factors, fear plays an important role in the survival of organisms. However, excessive fear is not only detrimental to the survival of the individual, but also easy to cause mental illness such as post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, which seriously affects the quality of life. Clinically, exposure therapy based on behavioral findings is often used to treat fear-related diseases, but these symptoms often recur when the patient break away from the treatment environment. Therefore, the investigation of the information processing in the neural circuits related to fear memory is essential for understanding the occurrence and development of these diseases and establishing new treatments. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the brain regions associated with the extinction of fear memory mainly include the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. In the process of fear extinction, these three brain regions show specific patterns of neural oscillations, and their activities are also synchronized, which constitute the neural basis for the successful extinction of fear memory. In the future, non-invasive brain stimulation based on oscillatory entrainment can be used to intervene the neural circuit and promote the extinction of fear memory and avoid the recurrence of fear, which provides new insights into the treatment of clinical fear-related disorders.