Epilepsy is highly comorbid with anxiety (Gaitatzis, 2005), which negatively impacts the quality of life of these patients (Johnson, 2004). To-date, we have little knowledge of the mechanisms underlying this comorbidity. Recent studies provide strong evidence for a role of network communciation between the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in mediating the expression of fear and anxiety (Stujenske et al., 2014;Felix-Ortiz et al., 2016) (for review see (Tovote et al., 2015)). A recent collaborative effort between the Maguire and Reijmers' labs demonstrates a role for parvalbumin (PV) interneurons in mediating the transition between the network communication of fear and the behavioral expression of fear (Davis, 2017). Specifically, we demonstrate that silencing PV interneurons in the BLA increase the reactivation of fear neurons following extinction and are required to suppress the network communication of fear, findings which are correlated with an increase in the behavioral expression of fear. These studies have largely focused on transitions between states of safety and states of fear and anxiety under physiological conditions. Few studies have investigated how this neural circuit communication may become dysregulation or corrupted under pathological conditions. Here we propose to investigate whether dysregulation in the network communication of anxiety may play a role in comorbid anxiety in epilepsy. Our preliminary data demonstrates a loss of PV interneurons in the BLA of chronically epileptic mice which we hypothesize facilitates the reactivation of anxiety neurons, promoting the network communication and the behavior expression of anxiety.
There is strong evidence for communication between the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in mediating the network communication of fear and anxiety. Our collaborative efforts have demonstrated a role for PV interneurons in controlling this network communication and the behavioral expression of fear. Here we will test the hypothesis that comorbid anxiety in epilepsy is due to a loss of PV interneurons in the BLA, facilitating the reactivation of the ensemble of neurons encoding anxiety, promoting the network communication of anxiety-like behaviors in mice.
