Title: | Social modulation of associative fear learning by pheromone communication |
Address: | "Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. tbredy@mednet.ucla.edu" |
ISSN/ISBN: | 1549-5485 (Electronic) 1072-0502 (Print) 1072-0502 (Linking) |
Abstract: | "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" |
Keywords: | "Animals Association Learning/*physiology Behavior, Animal/*physiology Extinction, Psychological/physiology Fear/*physiology Mice Motor Activity/drug effects Pain Threshold/drug effects Phenethylamines/pharmacology Pheromones/*physiology Psychotropic Drugs;Neuroscience;" |
Notes: | "MedlineBredy, Timothy W Barad, Mark eng Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2009/01/02 Learn Mem. 2008 Dec 30; 16(1):12-8. doi: 10.1101/lm.1226009. Print 2009 Jan" |