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Within the Department of Neurophysiology, we examine context-dependent fear memory in mice. To reveal how encoding, retrieval and extinction of remote fear memory differ from recent memory, neuromodulatory activity by noradrenaline and dopamine as well as neural activity is examined in the hippocampal-prefrontal network, known to have distinct and complementary roles in fear memories. The results arising from this will allow to causally test optogenetic interventions to prevent relapses tested 30 days after terminating extinction training, with the aim of potentially optimizing therapies for human anxiety disorders in humans.
Team
PD Dr. rer. nat. Georg Köhr
Group leader
After 15 years of basic research at the MPI for Medical Research in Heidelberg, focusing on NMDA receptor subtypes and their functional modulation by dopaminergic and adrenergic transmitters, translational research became a further focus in Mannheim since 2013. At the ZI, addictive behavior (cocaine, alcohol) was investigated in rats during operant conditioning and extinction. At the Dept. of Neurophysiology and supported by a DFG grant (KO 1064/10-1, 2026-2028), maturation and extinction of context-dependent fear memory is investigated in mice.
Martina Maio
PhD student
Funding
DFG: KO 1064/10-1 (2026-2028)
Selected publications
- Russo E, Ma T, Spanagel R, Durstewitz D, Toutounji H and Köhr G (2021). Coordinated Prefrontal State Transition Leads Extinction of Reward-Seeking Behaviors . Journal of Neuroscience 41: 2406–2419.
- Luis C, Cannella N, Spanagel R, Köhr G (2017). Persistent strengthening of the prefrontal cortex nucleus accumbens pathway during incubation of cocaine-seeking behavior . Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 138: 281–290.
- Berberich S, Pohle J, Pollard M, Barroso-Flores J, Köhr G (2017). Interplay between global and pathway-specific synaptic plasticity in CA1 pyramidal cells . Scientific Reports 7(1): 17040.
- Li SB, Du D, Hasan MT, Köhr G (2016). D4 Receptor activation differentially modulates hippocampal basal and apical dendritic synapses in freely moving mice . Cerebral Cortex 26: 647–655.
- Trevino M, Frey S, Köhr G (2012). Alpha-1 adrenergic receptors gate rapid orientation-specific reduction in visual discrimination . Cerebral Cortex 22: 2529–2541.
- Salgado H, Köhr G, Trevino M (2012). Noradrenergic 'tone' determines dichotomous control of cortical spike-timing plasticity . Scientific Reports 2: 419.
- Herwerth M, Jensen V, Novak M, Konopka W, Hvalby O, Köhr G (2012). D4 dopamine receptors modulate NR2B NMDA receptors and LTP in stratum oriens of hippocampal CA1 . Cerebral Cortex 22: 1786–1798.
