The prefrontal cortex outputs to the amygdala facilitate threat-discrimination learning

Abstract

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) plays a significant role in modulating the threat response, particularly in ambiguous circumstances. The mPFC performs this role through its connectivity with multiple brain regions, including the amygdala, long regarded as the central hub for threat responses. However, the roles of specific prefrontal projections to the amygdala in contextual threat discrimination are not yet fully understood, particularly regarding more complex learning tasks and when disentangling the functionally distinct prelimbic (PL) subunit of the mPFC. Here, we challenged mice with a contextual differential threat conditioning (DTC) learning task in which subjects were repeatedly exposed to one context predictive of a foot shock (CS+) and to a similar yet distinct context that was not (CS-). While control mice showed a similar threat response in both contexts immediately after threat conditioning, within a few days of contextual exposures, controls acquire threat discrimination and freeze less to CS- than to CS+ during late DTC. However, we found that inducing localized hypofunction of neuroplasticity in PL neurons projecting to the basolateral amygdala (BLA) impairs performance on DTC. This finding identifies the specific population of neurons in PL cortices as a critical site for learning to discriminate threat.