Walker - Emotional circuit and ELA

Question 1

What major functions do cover the corticolimbic, executive control, and corticostriatal circuits?

Answer 1

Corticolimbic: socioemotional processing
Executive control: self-regulation
Corticostriatal: reward processing

Question 2

What is the top-down fear control pathway? What is the bottom-up fear response pathway?

Answer 2

Top-down fear control: mPFC -> BLA

Bottom-up fear response: BLA -> mPFC

Question 3

What are the two main pathways of emotional stimuli to the amygdala?

Answer 3

Long route (high res): emotional stimulus -> sensory thalamus -> sensory CORTEX -> amygdala -> emotional response
Short route (low res): emotional stimulus -> sensory thalamus -> amygdala -> emotional response

Question 4

What are three important outputs from the efferent pathways of the amygdala?

Answer 4

HPA axis activation
Contextual memory
Attention

Question 5

Which subnuclei of the amygdala mediate the following functions?

-Receiving inputs from thalamus and sensory cortex

-Main information relay centre of amydgdala, projecting to CeA

-Main output of amydgdala, regulating several functions along which HPA axis

Answer 5

• Lateral nucleus of amygdala (LA)

-Basolateral amygdala (BLA)

-Central amygdala (CeA)

Question 6

What is the sex difference in fear conditioning of adult rats exposed to ELA?

Answer 6

Fear responses increased in males but not in females from early life adversity

Question 7

True or false: fear extinction is stimulus-dependent but not context-dependent.

Answer 7

False: is context-dependent.

Question 8

True or false: fear conditioning and fear extinctions are mediating by different pathways in the corticolimbic circuit and different neurons in the BLA.

Answer 8

True.

Question 9

What are the two pathways of fear expression and fear extinction?

Answer 9

Fear expression: prelimbic (PL) PFC -> basal amygdala (BA) ->central nucleus of amygdala (CeM)

Fear extinction: infralimbic (IL) PFC + BA -> amygdala-intercalated cells (ITC) -> (-) CeM

Question 10

Which regions of the fear pathways have protracted developmental trajectories?

Answer 10

Amygdala and mPFC connections

Question 11

True or false: amygdala in children show stronger reactivity to emotional stimuli.

Answer 11

True

Question 12

Does the bottom-up or top-down pathway of fear/anxiety system develop first?

Answer 12

Bottom-up (fear response) before top-down (fear control)

Question 13

What are the different behavioural responses between sensitive period, transitional sensitive period, and post-sensitive period for aversive learning in relation to mother?

Answer 13

sensitive period: mother buffer predominates regardless of abuse

transitional sensitive period: aversive learning functional, but sill mother buffer regardless of abuse

post-sensitive period: aversive learning + no mother buffer

Question 14

What is observed in term of amygdala-mPFC connectivity maturity in children raised in orphanages?

Answer 14

Overmature connectivity

Question 15

Which firing frequency of neurons tends to be disrupted and coupled with theta frequencies after maltreatment ?

Answer 15

Disruption in gamma frequency

Question 16

What are three broad cellular/molecular families affected by ELA?

Answer 16

Neurons, PNN, glia

Question 17

What are the two minimal conditions for ELA to lead to lead to dysfunction in amygdala activity?

Answer 17

Increased CORT + social context

Question 18

What does say the Attachment theory of Bowlby regarding quality of caregiving?

Answer 18

Attachment will happen regardless of quality bc. learned process

Question 19

True or false: level of social buffering is correlated with attachment quality

Answer 19

True

Question 20

Why is amygdala-dependent fear learning usually not happening in pups under PN10? What can change that?

Answer 20

Bc. social buffering from mother

ELA can change that (increased CORT)