Reznikov et. al (2015)

In the papers for this week, Herry et. al (2008) focused on the populations of neurons that fire during fear and extinction training while Reznikov et. al (2015) separated out rats that failed to extinguish fear responses and then measured differences between these two populations in both plasma corticosterone levels and behavioral tests. I think the papers are focused on a common goal but they are very different. Herry et. al (2008) use spike recordings from specific neurons in the basolateral complex of the amygdala to show fear conditioning/extinction. However, I am more interested in the paper by Reznikov et. al (2015) which aims to create a better animal model of PTSD.

I found this paper especially interesting because a lot of what we discuss in class seems to come back to whether or not the models used in other papers are truly indicative of the disorder. Reznikov et. al (2015) discussed the different methods that can be used to induce PTSD symptoms, and they focused on the behavioral variation of the animals, such that the percentage that developed negative behaviors long term was comparable to the proportion of the human population that develops PTSD. I thought that this, as well as separation into strong and weak extinction categories, really validated the study with respect to improving the model such that it is similar to the human model.

I thought that the weak and strong extinction categorization was interesting because it accounted for variability in reactions to traumatic stress, and Reznikov et. al (2015) were able to show that there were significant differences in behavior and corticosterone levels when the two levels of extinction were compared. I also found it interesting that the differences in corticosterone were observed before the fear conditioning, since that could be a predictive measure of PTSD development. I think that this paper made a strong case for upgrading the animal model of PTSD, and it would be interesting to see how/if Herry et. al (2008) could change their study to fit a model that seems more representative of the human presentation.