title: Reduction of prelimbic inhibitory gating of auditory evoked potentials after fear conditioning.
abstract: Inhibitory gating (IG) is a basic central nervous system process for filtering repetitive sensory information. Although IG deficits coincide with cognitive and emotional dysfunction in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders, limited research has been completed on the basic, functional nature of IG. Persistent IG occurs in rat prelimbic medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a crucial site for modulating emotional learning. To investigate the interaction of affect and IG, we recorded local field potentials (LFP) directly from prelimbic mPFC and examined the influence of tone-shock fear conditioning (FC) on IG. Behavioral reactions during IG were observed before and after FC, and increase of orienting response after FC indicated induction of tone-shock association. After FC, some components of LFP response exhibited short-term weakening of IG. On a subsequent day of recording, IG strengthened for all LFP components, but individual components differed in their particular changes. Affective regulation of IG represents an important factor influencing within-subject IG variability, and these results have implications for understanding the role of rapid, implicit neural coding involved in emotional learning and affective disruption in psychiatric disease.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Brain Research and Imaging Neuroscience, Wayne State University School of Medicine, USA. rmears@bidmc.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Ryan P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Mears
authors.forename: Nash N
authors.initials: NN
authors.lastname: Boutros
authors.forename: Howard C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Cromwell