Enzo Nio and Dagmar Timmann: Fear extinction and the cerebellum скачать в хорошем качестве

Enzo Nio and Dagmar Timmann: Fear extinction and the cerebellum

While traditionally associated with motor coordination, the cerebellum is increasingly recognized for its role in cognitive and emotional learning. In the emotional domain, research has focused on associative fear learning. In rodents, vermis lesions reduce conditioned bradycardia, but few studies have explored fear conditioning in cerebellar patients. A recent 7T fMRI study in patients with cerebellar degeneration showed altered cerebellar activation during fear acquisition and extinction, although behavioral effects were subtle. Most evidence for cerebellar involvement in fear conditioning comes from neuroimaging in healthy participants. Interestingly, activations are often strongest in the lateral cerebellum—beyond the vermis, contrary to early rodent lesion findings. 7T fMRI studies from our group suggest that the cerebellum contributes to extinction learning by encoding prediction errors via its connections with the VTA. The omission of the aversive stimulus during early extinction is thought to be unexpectedly rewarding, aligning with newer rodent data showing cerebellar involvement in reward processing. Moreover, extinction-related cerebellar activation was left-lateralized. Parallel findings from collaborators using c-fos mapping in mice revealed left-lateralized activation of cerebellar granule and Purkinje cells during extinction. These results support a broader role for the (left) cerebellum in emotional learning.   Enzo Nio is a fourth-year PhD student in Dagmar Timmann’s lab. He previously completed his master’s thesis in Alexandra Badura’s group, where he investigated degeneration of the substantia nigra and cerebellum using structural MRI in both mice and a patient. Dagmar Timmann is a clinician neuroscientist who has studied cerebellar function in humans for many years. She earned her medical degree in Tübingen and completed postdoctoral training with Jim Bloedel, Fay Horak, and Jon Hore. She is an Associate Prof. of Experimental Neurology and runs the ataxia clinic at Essen University Hospital.