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Trace Fear Conditioning in Mice
Published on: March 20, 2014
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Different genetic factors underlie fear conditioning and episodic memory
Mats Fredrikson1, Peter Annas, John M Hettema
1aDepartment of Psychology, Uppsala University, Uppsala bDepartment of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden cDepartment of Psychiatry, Virginia Institute for Psychiatry and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA.
Psychiatric Genetics
|May 14, 2015
Summary
Genetic factors influencing fear conditioning and episodic memory are distinct. This suggests separate genetic influences on anxiety disorders and memory, impacting their development and maintenance.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Behavioral Genetics
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Fear conditioning is implicated in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) acquisition.
- Episodic memory, the conscious recall of events, is crucial after trauma.
- Both fear conditioning and episodic memory are known to be heritable.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether fear conditioning and episodic memory share common genetic factors.
- To analyze the genetic overlap between fear learning and memory recall in healthy individuals.
Main Methods:
- Studied 173 healthy twin pairs to assess fear conditioning and episodic memory.
- Used electrodermal activity to measure fear learning from visual stimuli predicting electric shocks.
- Employed multivariate structural equation modeling to analyze genetic influences on both memory and fear conditioning.
Main Results:
- Twin models indicated moderate genetic influences on both fear conditioning and episodic memory.
- Crucially, no significant genetic covariation was found between fear conditioning and episodic memory.
Conclusions:
- Individual differences in fear conditioning and episodic memory are influenced by distinct genetic factors.
- Genetic risk for anxiety disorders may involve at least two separate memory-related genetic components.
- Findings support the role of independent memory systems in fear-related disorders.
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