ArticleScience advances2021
Theta oscillations synchronize human medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala during fear learning.
Article in Science advances, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed.
- Social support facilitates threat extinction retention in humans: an fMRI study.Translational psychiatry · 2025Trial
- A Critical Time Window of Neocortex Modulation for Remote Fear Memory in Rats and Humans.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Activity of VMS-projecting mPFC neurons encodes individual vulnerability to chronic restraint stress in male mice.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Adaptive shifts in amygdala-hippocampal theta coupling govern aversive learning and extinction.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The Rostral Ventrolateral Medulla Input to Central Amygdala Regulates Anxiety-Like Behaviors in Mice for Chronic Light Exposure.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2026Article
- Altered Global and Local Network Organization in Exercise Dependence: Evidence from Graph Theory Analysis of Resting-state EEG.Brain topography · 2026Article
- Hippocampal-Prelimbic Coupling During Context-Dependent Extinction Retrieval in Rats.Hippocampus · 2026Article
- Representational dynamics during extinction of fear memories in the human brain.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Developmental differences in threat learning are associated with changes in frontal-central theta activity.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- Beta bursts mediate amygdala gating of hippocampal emotional encoding.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Frequency-specific and state-dependent neural responses to brain stimulation.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- The case for hemispheric lateralization of the human amygdala in fear processing.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Biased Information Routing Through the Basolateral Amygdala, Altered Valence Processing, and Impaired Affective States Associated With Psychiatric Illnesses.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- Corticolimbic structures activation during preparation and execution of respiratory manoeuvres in voluntary olfactory sampling: An intracranial EEG study.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Brain local structural connectomes and the subtypes of the medial temporal lobe parcellations.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Hemodynamic responses to emotional auditory stimuli in patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness: an fNIRS study.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Article
- Evaluating multimodal physiological signals for fear detection: relative utility of pupillometry, heart rate, and EEG.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Alcohol Modulates Frontal Cortex and BLA Network States Which Correlate with Future Voluntary Alcohol Consumption.eNeuro · 2024Article
- Article
- Basolateral amygdala oscillations enable fear learning in a biophysical model.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Numerous animal studies have demonstrated that fear acquisition and expression rely on the coordinated activity of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and amygdala and that theta oscillations support interregional communication within the fear network. However, it remains unclear whether these results can be generalized to fear learning in humans. We addressed this question using intracranial electroencephalography recordings in 13 patients with epilepsy during a fear conditioning paradigm. We observed increased power and inter-regional synchronization of amygdala and mPFC in theta (4 to 8 hertz) oscillations for conditioned stimulus (CS+) versus CS-. Analysis of information flow revealed that the dorsal mPFC (dmPFC) led amygdala activity in theta oscillations. Last, a computational model showed that trial-by-trial changes in amygdala theta oscillations predicted the model-based associability (i.e., learning rate). This study provides compelling evidence that theta oscillations within and between amygdala, ventral mPFC, and dmPFC constitute a general mechanism of fear learning across species.
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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.