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Updated: Dec 28, 2025
A Novel Pavlovian Fear Conditioning Paradigm to Study Freezing and Flight Behavior
Published on: January 5, 2021
Prefrontal cortex projections to the nucleus reuniens suppress freezing following two-way signaled avoidance training
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Institute for Neuroscience, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4235, USA.
Abstract:
Signaled active avoidance (SAA) behavior requires the suppression of defensive reactions, such as freezing, that conflict with the avoidance response. The neural mechanisms of this inhibitory process are not well understood. Here, we demonstrate that ventromedial prefrontal cortex projections to the nucleus reuniens of the thalamus are recruited following SAA training to suppress freezing in rats. This projection may serve as a crucial common pathway for the inhibition of innate defensive reactions that interfere with proactive behavior, thus facilitating adaptive coping.
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