Social Modulation of Associative Fear Learning by Pheromone Communication

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 chemosi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLearning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) Vol. 16; no. 1; pp. 12 - 18
Main Authors Bredy, Timothy W, Barad, Mark
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 01.01.2009
Subjects
Animal Behavior
Animals
Association Learning - physiology
Behavior, Animal - physiology
Biochemistry
Cognitive Processes
Conditioning
Cues
Extinction, Psychological - physiology
Fear
Fear - physiology
Learning Processes
Learning Theories
Mice
Motor Activity - drug effects
Pain Threshold - drug effects
Phenethylamines - pharmacology
Pheromones - physiology
Psychotropic Drugs - pharmacology
Smell - physiology
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Summary: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.
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ISSN:1072-0502
1549-5485
DOI:10.1101/lm.1226009