The mouse dorsal peduncular cortex encodes fear memory

• Published in: Cell reports (Cambridge) Vol. 43; no. 4; p. 114097
• Main Authors: Campos-Cardoso, Rodrigo, Desa, Zephyr R., Fitzgerald, Brianna L., Moore, Alana G., Duhon, Jace L., Landar, Victoria A., Clem, Roger L., Cummings, Kirstie A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 23.04.2024
• Subjects: Animals; dorsal peduncular cortex; extinction; Fear - physiology; fear memory; infralimbic cortex; learning; Male; medial prefrontal cortex; Memory - physiology; Mice; Mice, Inbred C57BL; Neurons - physiology; Optogenetics; plasticity; Prefrontal Cortex - physiology; medial prefrontal cortex; extinction; CP: Cell biology; infralimbic cortex; CP: Neuroscience; fear memory; plasticity; learning; dorsal peduncular cortex
• ISSN: 2211-1247; 2211-1247
• DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114097

The rodent medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is functionally organized across the dorsoventral axis, where dorsal and ventral subregions promote and suppress fear, respectively. As the ventral-most subregion, the dorsal peduncular cortex (DP) is hypothesized to function in fear suppression. However, this role has not been explicitly tested. Here, we demonstrate that the DP paradoxically functions as a fear-encoding brain region and plays a minimal role in fear suppression. By using multimodal analyses, we demonstrate that DP neurons exhibit fear-learning-related plasticity and acquire cue-associated activity across learning and memory retrieval and that DP neurons activated by fear memory acquisition are preferentially reactivated upon fear memory retrieval. Further, optogenetic activation and silencing of DP fear-related neural ensembles drive the promotion and suppression of freezing, respectively. Overall, our results suggest that the DP plays a role in fear memory encoding. Moreover, our findings redefine our understanding of the functional organization of the rodent mPFC. [Display omitted] •The dorsal peduncular cortex (DP) is recruited following fear conditioning but not extinction•DP neurons exhibit fear-related plasticity and cue-associated activity•Fear-tagged DP neurons exert bidirectional control over fear memory expression•Results point toward a revised understanding of the functional organization of the mPFC Campos-Cardoso et al. employ a series of multimodal analyses to demonstrate that the mouse dorsal peduncular cortex encodes fear but not extinction memory. These findings redefine the principles of the functional organization of the rodent mPFC by providing insight into the role of this ventral-most mPFC subregion.