Fear is an essential adaptive behavior that enables animals to avoid life-threatening stimuli. However, dysregulated fear leads to psychiatric conditions such as panic disorders, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Hence, understanding how fear is regulated is critical for unraveling the etiology of these diseases. The Lateral Habenula (LHb) has emerged as a key hub for processing aversive information, suggesting it may play a role in fear regulation. In this seminar, I will present our work using the Fear Conditioning paradigm to characterize LHb encoding during fear learning and the expression of fear memories. Our research suggests the LHb is a critical modulator of fear learning that could be targeted to treat psychiatric diseases characterized by fear dysregulation.

More information:

• Laboratory of Brain Circuits of Emotions