Fig. 3: Analysis of specificity of the interplay between long-term fear memory and pain.
From: Prefrontal engrams of long-term fear memory perpetuate pain perception
a, Impact of optogenetic silencing or activation of a randomly targeted prelimbic neuronal population on long-term fear recall and capsaicin-induced nocifensive behaviors; an average of 6,919 neurons per mm3 were labeled with ArchT and 3,689 neurons per mm3 were labeled with ChR2. Data were analyzed by paired t-test; n = 13 mice for the silencing group and 9 mice for the activation group. b, Impact of optogenetic silencing of the fear engram or random prefrontal neurons on avoidance of non-painful, aversive white noise, shown in the form of example body heat maps (above) and quantitative overview (below). Data were analyzed by two-way ANOVA with a Šidák correction for multiple comparisons; *P < 0.05 compared to baseline; silencing fear recall neurons: n = 10 mice per group; silencing random neurons: n = 11 mice per group. c, Impact of optogenetic silencing of prefrontal fear engram neurons on appetitive reward learning behavior. For reward learning, a one-way ANOVA with a Dunnett correction for multiple comparisons was performed. For the number of responding trials, a paired t-test was performed and for percent accuracy a Wilcoxon test was performed; *P < 0.05; n = 16 mice per group. d, Experimental scheme for labeling prefrontal neurons activated during recall of innate fear and impact of their optogenetic activation on fear recall and capsaicin-induced tonic pain behavior. Data were analyzed by paired t-test; *P < 0.05; n = 9 mice per group; NS, not significant. All data are shown as mean ± s.e.m. All P and F values are shown in Supplementary Table 1.
