A team of neuroscientists has identified processes the brain undergoes to distinguish real and present dangers from those linked to past experiences in mice. The findings, which appear in the journal Nature, have implications for our understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)–an affliction marked by the inability to distinguish between past and present dangers or to recognize “safe” situations.

“Memories of a traumatic episode can last for a long time,” says Professor Eric Klann, director of New York University’s Center for Neural Science and the paper’s senior author. “But we are able to use such memories selectively: to predict and respond to a subsequent, related danger while also recognizing when threats do not exist. This is especially important for survival behavior in an uncertain environment such as a conflict zone or at times of social unrest.” “This has significant implications for memory disorders such as PTSD, where patients have difficulty distinguishing between safety and threat cues,” adds lead author Prerana Shrestha, a postdoctoral researcher in NYU’s Center for Neural Science. The study, which also included researchers from Rockefeller University and McGill University, focused on the neurological processes that mice use to make these distinctions. Learning to identify and appropriately respond to cues in an uncertain environment is crucial for animal survival, the researchers note. Specifically, cues that reliably predict danger prompt behaviors such as freezing in order to escape detection. However, along with the threat-predicting cues, an uncertain environment can present cues that predict safety–or, specifically, lack of danger. Animals, then, need to respond to the threat-predicting cue with defensive behaviors and, conversely, to safety cues by ceasing a threat response and resuming normal behaviors.

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