Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. The two-week OxTalks freeze period starts on Monday 2nd March. During this time, there will be no facility to publish or edit events. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period. Once Oxford Events launches, you will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
A fearful event forms a strong memory. If recalled, either willingly or not, that memory can change behaviour. To update or weaken or strengthen a memory, it is thought it first becomes destabilised under certain conditions of reactivation. Fear reactivation engages dopamine in the amygdala, but its contribution to reactivation and destabilisation of fear memory is unclear. Dopamine may be a modulator of fear memory processing through its ability to regulate synaptic mechanisms.
Following a combination of behavioural testing (Pavlovian fear-conditioning), pharmacological intervention and molecular analysis in rodents, we found the reactivation of a fear memory activated the Extracellular Regulated Kinase (ERK) pathway in the amygdala downstream of dopamine receptors and may interact with glutamatergic signalling to control distinct stages of memory processing. The results deepen our understanding of the molecular mechanisms downstream of dopamine signalling for reactivation and destabilisation of memories.
