Journal article

Divergent prefrontal dopaminergic mechanisms mediate drug- and fear-associated cue extinction during adolescence versus adulthood

Isabel C Zbukvic, Jee Hyun Kim

EUROPEAN NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY | ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV | Published : 2018

Abstract

Cue-associated learning is vital to guiding behaviour for survival. Adolescence represents a key developmental stage for perturbations in cue-related learning, including a characteristic deficit in cue extinction learning. The present review summarizes evidence from animal and human literature that cue extinction is critically mediated by prefrontal dopamine, a system that undergoes dramatic reorganization during adolescence. We propose that extinction learning and memory is governed by a developmentally dynamic balance of dopamine receptors in the prefrontal cortex, which changes across adolescence into adulthood. This is contrary to the previous idea that extinction deficits during adolesc..

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