Sydney Trask
Indiana University, IN·Neuroscience
Exposure-based treatments for anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rely on extinction: repeatedly facing a feared cue without the bad outcome. Extinction works, but fear often comes back.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
- Topics
fear conditioning
extinction learning
UCS deflation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Compare UCS deflation, presenting weaker versions of a feared stimulus, with standard extinction in renewal, spontaneous recovery and reinstatement tests, predicting that only deflation reduces all three forms of fear relapse.
- Test whether neural activity in the pathway from the infralimbic cortex to the basolateral amygdala is required for UCS deflation's lasting fear reduction, using optogenetics to control these neurons with light.
- Use a robust activity marker (RAM) approach to tag neurons active during fear learning and test whether deflation reactivates this original memory ensemble more than extinction does, including after renewal testing.
- Test whether the ubiquitin proteasome system, which tags proteins for breakdown, plays a unique role in deflation by measuring synaptic and nuclear K48 polyubiquitin and blocking protein breakdown in the brain.
More about the research
That happens because extinction lays down a new, competing memory while leaving the original fear memory intact. The lab has identified in behavioral studies a different approach that seems to avoid this relapse, called unconditional stimulus (UCS) deflation. Instead of removing the bad outcome, animals experience weaker versions of it, such as a mild shock. This appears to change how threatening the original outcome seems, which weakens fear of cues linked to it.
Why it matters
Fear that returns after exposure therapy is a major problem for people with PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder. By showing how weak versions of a feared experience may durably weaken the original fear memory, and by pinpointing the brain circuits and molecules involved, this work could guide behavioral treatments designed to reduce fear and anxiety long-term with less relapse.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Christa McIntyre
University of Texas at Dallas, TX·Neuroscience
Test in rats whether pairing exposure with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) produces fear extinction memories that last longer and generalize to related cues, compared with exposure alone.
Jun-Hyeong Cho
University of California-Riverside, CA·Neuroscience
Determine how contextual fear memory is encoded through synaptic strengthening in the hippocampus–amygdala pathway, combining engram cell labeling, optogenetics and electrophysiology.
Roger L Clem
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether somatostatin interneurons in the ventral hippocampus are recruited during recall of extinguished context fear, using intersectional genetics and calcium imaging to monitor distinct groups of these cells.
The school
Indiana University: 21 labs on PI Pages, $897M a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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