ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026
Locus coeruleus-amygdala circuit disrupts prefrontal control to impair fear extinction.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Hypothesis on PTSD Pathophysiology: Role of CRH, Noradrenaline, and Glucocorticoid Receptors in an Amygdala-Centered Closed-Loop System.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Mechanistic Non-Response After Psychotherapy for Anxiety Disorders: A Maintenance-Mechanism-Based Clinical Taxonomy.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Locus coeruleus-amygdala circuit disrupts prefrontal control to impair fear extinction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- Arousal increases locus coeruleus blood flow, salience-related brain responses, and modulates negative-valence attentional biases.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Stress undermines extinction learning and hinders exposure-based clinical therapies for a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders. In both animals and humans, dysfunction in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) contributes to stress-impaired extinction, but the neural circuit by which stress modulates vmPFC function is not known. We hypothesize that locus coeruleus (LC) norepinephrine undermines extinction learning by recruiting projections from the basolateral amygdala (BLA) to vmPFC. Using a combination of circuit-specific chemogenetics and calcium imaging, we find that activation of LC noradrenergic neurons mimics a behavioral stressor (footshock), induces freezing behavior, reduces spontaneous neuronal activity in the vmPFC, impairs extinction learning, and alters the population dynamics of vmPFC ensembles. Activation of LC also increases shock-induced responses in BLA neurons that project to vmPFC. Selective chemogenetic activation of LC→BLA projections impairs extinction; propranolol infusions into the BLA mitigate the effects of LC activation. Together, these results indicate that the BLA serves as a critical interface between the LC and mPFC to mediate stress-induced extinction impairments.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.