Freezing circuitry

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Chapter 12 endnote 47, from How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett.
Some context is:

...a simple behavior like freezing is supported by multiple circuits within a distributed network that is not specific to freezing or fear.

Amygdala neurons are neither individually necessary nor collectively sufficient for "fear learning" to occur. Even a simple behavior, like freezing, is not triggered by a single circuit; instead, there appear to be multiple (degenerate) pathways within a highly interconnected set of neurons including both amygdala neurons and other neurons with the interoceptive network that control freezing.[1][2] These pathways work by prediction, not by stimulus-response.[3] And this circuitry is not specific to freezing; for example, behaviors that are interpreted as “anxiety” also rely on the same distributed circuitry.[1]


Notes on the Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 Tovote, Philip, Jonathan Paul Fadok, and Andreas Lüthi. 2015. "Neuronal circuits for fear and anxiety." Nature Reviews Neuroscience 16 (6): 317-331.
  2. Herry, Cyril and Joshua P. Johansen. 2014. "Encoding of fear learning and memory in distributed neuronal circuits." Nature Neuroscience, 17(12):1644-1654.
  3. Li, Susan Shi Yuan, and Gavan P. McNally. 2014. "The conditions that promote fear learning: prediction error and Pavlovian fear conditioning." Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 108: 14-21.