# Cortical circuitry and mechanisms underlying remote cue-specific fear memory and extinction

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT & ST AGRIC COLLEGE · 2022 · $504,064

## Abstract

Project Summary
Individuals with fear disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experience
excessively strong and intrusive fear memories about stimuli that were encountered during a prior
trauma, including individual sounds or visual stimuli (“cue-specific” fear memory) or the
combination of stimuli that together define the place in which the event occurred (“contextual” fear
memory). The memories may have been formed recently or long ago (“remote” memories), in
which case they may plague a person for a substantial portion of his/her life. The development of
effective therapies depends on a thorough understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie
these different types of fear memories, as well as fear extinction, which is the basis for exposure-
based therapy commonly used to reduce fear in humans. To date, a substantial body of research
has identified discrete neural systems that support recent versus remote contextual memory, and
other studies have identified the substrates of recently-acquired cue-specific memory and
extinction, but very little work has focused on the brain mechanisms involved in remote cue-
specific memory and extinction. This is important to resolve particularly with respect to PTSD
since individuals often do not seek therapy until long after the traumatic event, especially in cases
of combat trauma or sexual assault. To address this, the proposed research advances a new
theoretical model of the neural circuits that underlie remote cue-specific fear memory and
extinction. This model is based on new data from our laboratory and combines state-of-the art
chemogenetic and optogentic-anatomical approaches to test the hypotheses that a)
communication between the retrosplenial cortex and secondary sensory cortices is necessary for
remote cue-specific fear memory, and b) the postrhinal cortex mediates the context-dependency
of extinction of remote cue-specific fear.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10401949
- **Project number:** 5R01MH118734-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT & ST AGRIC COLLEGE
- **Principal Investigator:** Allan T Gulledge
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $504,064
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-07-01 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10401949

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10401949, Cortical circuitry and mechanisms underlying remote cue-specific fear memory and extinction (5R01MH118734-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10401949. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*