Grant: China-Canada Joint Health Research Initiative

Fear memory is the ability to remember fear experience. When fear memory is abnormally strengthened, for example, if you are suffering with post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), the trauma you experienced is so overwhelming that you find that you cannot move on and you feel stuck with painful memories that do not fade. Therefore, uncovering the exact mechanisms underlying fear memory will provide essential information for a better understanding of PTSD. The present project designed to explore the mechanism underlying fear memory in rats will be conducted jointed in Dr. Lin Xu's group at Kunming Institute of Zoology in China and Dr. Xia Zhang's group at University of Ottawa Institute of Mental Health Research in Canada. Specifically, Dr. Zhang's group will employ their established protocols to examine the molecular mechanisms, whereas Dr. Xu's group will investigate the cellular and behavioral mechanisms by taking advantage of recording electric activity of brain cells and behavioral changes in freely moving rats. The current project is a natural extension of our previous collaborative research, during the recent several years, on memory and autism, which has been financially supported by a China-Canada joint health research grant.