I am an PhD student at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine. I work in Dr. Quirk's lab of fear learning.
Project Info:
I am interested in exploring the plasticity events that underlie one type of learning process: extinction of conditioned fear. Fear extinction is a process whereby an organism learns to inhibit its fear responses and occurs when a conditioned stimulus is presented in the absence of any unconditioned stimulus. Previous studies have found that lesions or inactivation of the infralimbic (IL) subregion of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) disrupt the consolidation of extinction memory, but it is unknown if mPFC serves as a storage site for the extinction memory. We addressed this issue by measuring levels of phosporylated ERK (pERK), a molecular marker for the plastic changes that underlie memory formation, in mPFC. Extinction-induced pERK expression in IL would support the hypothesis that IL is a storage site for extinction memory, and modulates fear via projections to the amygdala. Our preliminary data indicates that the infralimbic cortex may be the locus of the extinction memory.