Stress and the dynamic fear memory:synaptic-cellular bases and their implication for psychiatry disorders.

CALFA GD, GIACHERO M, MOLINA VA

Psychiatry and Neuroscience Update

Springer

Año: 2017; p. 221 - 238

There is consensus that the acquisition and storage ofrelevant aversive information allows the organisms to cope with threatensituations. Such mnemonic process is supported by enduring modifications in theaversive neuronal circuitry resulting in changes in the behavioral response. Inthis way, the capacity to form long-lasting emotional memories allows topredict and anticipate a potential threat in future situation thus favoring,from an evolutionary point of view, survival conditions.In this context, one of the relevant questions is howthe perturbations on the modulatory mechanism involved in the adaptive responseresults in an excessive and inappropriate state of fear and anxiety? Associative learning related to the emergence of along-lasting fear memory is critically implicated in the pathogenesis ofanxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, phobia and panic. Consonantwith such view, most of the symptoms of these psychiatry entities are due tothe persistence and the re-experience of traumatic memories. Consequently, understanding the neurobiologicalchanges associated to the formation of long-lasting fear memory underparticular negative emotional states is relevant  for the comprehension of the underlyingmechanisms involved  in the occurrence oftraumatic and persistent memories as well as for the rebuilding of potentialtherapeutics tools that could reestablish the adaptive dynamic of the fearmemory trace. In this chapter, we will focus on the relevantoutcomes observed in animal models of fear learning and memory and itsinteraction with stressful experiences, along with the observations performedin humans under the psychiatric illnesses previously mentioned.