Social modulation of associative fear learning by pheromone communication.
Mice communicate through visual, vocal, and olfactory cues that influence innate, nonassociative behavior. We here report that exposure to a recently fear-conditioned familiar mouse impairs acquisition of conditioned fear and facilitates fear extinction, effects mimicked by both an olfactory chemosignal emitted by a recently fear-conditioned familiar mouse and by the putative stress-related anxiogenic pheromone beta-phenylethylamine (beta-PEA). Together, these findings suggest social modulation of higher-order cognitive processing through pheromone communication and support the concurrent excitor hypothesis of extinction learning.
Bredy
Timothy W
TW
Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. tbredy@mednet.ucla.edu
Barad
Mark
M
D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D005108:Extinction, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D051379:Mice; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000187:drug effects; D017288:Pain Threshold / Q000187:drug effects; D010627:Phenethylamines / Q000494:pharmacology; D010675:Pheromones / Q000502:physiology*; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000494:pharmacology; D012903:Smell / Q000502:physiology
D010627:Phenethylamines; D010675:Pheromones; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs; C029261:phenethylamine