Identifying the memory engram that drives fear relapse (2024-2026)

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a major burden for individuals that suffered from a severe traumatic event such as a car accident, natural catastrophe and war exposure. Even though psychological treatment in the form of exposure therapy exists, patients often suffer from fear relapse outside the clinical setting, complicating many every day life tasks. Thus, an understanding about the neural mechanism that mediates fear and its extinction is critical to optimize the treatment and to decrease the burden of disease. Using an approach to investigate the precise neural networks active during the fear learning and its relapse, called the neural engram, the proposed study offers a unique way to investigate synaptic connections and pharmacological properties of the synapses that are reactivated during the fear relapse to ultimately optimize treatment options.