title: The fragrant power of collective fear.
abstract: Fear is a well-characterized biological response to threatening or stressful situations in humans and other social animals. Importantly, fearful stimuli in the natural environment are likely to be encountered concurrently by a group of animals. The modulation of fear acquisition and fear memory by a group as opposed to an individual experience, however, remains largely unknown. Here, we demonstrate a robust reduction in fear memory to an aversive event undertaken in a group despite similar fear learning between individually- and group-conditioned rats. This reduction persists outside the group confines, appears to be a direct outcome of group cognizance and is counteracted by loss of olfactory signaling among the group members. These results show that a group experience of fear can be protective and suggest that distinct neural pathways from those classically studied in individuals modulate collective fear memories.
authors.affiliation: Department of Laboratory Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.
authors.forename: Roa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Harb
authors.forename: Jane R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Division of Molecular Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jane R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Taulor
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008399:Mass Behavior; D008568:Memory; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012903:Smell