ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2011
Spine growth in the anterior cingulate cortex is necessary for the consolidation of contextual fear memory.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 77 papers.
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Who cites it
77 citing papers in PubMed, 181 citations in OpenAlex.
- Identification of an intrusive-hypervigilant phenotype of posttraumatic stress symptoms with unique stress peptide and amygdala functional connectivity profiles.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Threat intensity shapes cortical engram architecture supporting remote memory retrieval.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Engram Synapses and Synapse Dynamics in Memory Processing.Journal of neurochemistry · 2026Review
- An amygdala-cortical circuit for encoding generalized fear memories.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Primary auditory cortex activity during early retrieval supports later extinction learning.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2025Article
- Temporal dynamics of Purkinje cell-intrinsic excitability governs cerebellar systems consolidation.iScience · 2025Article
- Reactivation of encoding ensembles in the prelimbic cortex supports temporal associations.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Is the Papez circuit the location of the elusive episodic memory engram?IBRO neuroscience reports · 2024Article
- Review
- The Role of Prefrontal Ensembles in Memory Across Time: Time-Dependent Transformations of Prefrontal Memory Ensembles.Advances in neurobiology · 2024Review
- Functional network of contextual and temporal memory has increased amygdala centrality and connectivity with the retrosplenial cortex, thalamus, and hippocampus.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Formation and fate of an engram in the lateral amygdala supporting a rewarding memory in mice.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Article
- Article
- Age-related attenuation of cortical synaptic tagging in the ACC is rescued by BDNF or a TrkB receptor agonist in both sex of mice.Molecular brain · 2023Article
- Remote memory in a Bayesian model of context fear conditioning (BaconREM).Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- The Three Musketeers in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex: Subregion-specific Structural and Functional Plasticity Underlying Fear Memory Stages.Experimental neurobiology · 2022Review
- Neural representation of the parent-child attachment from infancy to adulthood.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2022Article
- Activation of a Locus Coeruleus to Dorsal Hippocampus Noradrenergic Circuit Facilitates Associative Learning.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2022Article
- The Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Fear Memory: Dynamics, Connectivity, and Engrams.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Developmental emergence of persistent memory for contextual and auditory fear in mice.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2021Article
17 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Remodeling of cortical connectivity is thought to allow initially hippocampus-dependent memories to be expressed independently of the hippocampus at remote time points. Consistent with this, consolidation of a contextual fear memory is associated with dendritic spine growth in neurons of the anterior cingulate cortex (aCC). To directly test whether such cortical structural remodeling is necessary for memory consolidation, we disrupted spine growth in the aCC at different times following contextual fear conditioning in mice. We took advantage of previous studies showing that the transcription factor myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2) negatively regulates spinogenesis both in vitro and in vivo. We found that increasing MEF2-dependent transcription in the aCC during a critical posttraining window (but not at later time points) blocked both the consolidation-associated dendritic spine growth and subsequent memory expression. Together, these data strengthen the causal link between cortical structural remodeling and memory consolidation and, further, identify MEF2 as a key regulator of these processes.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.