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Connections between the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) moderate extinction of conditioned responses. In exposure therapies, the success of extinction depends on the substitution of new associations for conditioned fear responses. Just as gene methylation reduces gene expression in systems involved in extinction, histone acetylation enhances gene expression and thus has the potential to increase activity of genes in these systems. Researchers in a preclinical, partially industry-supported study examined whether enhancing gene promoter acetylation in these regions with sodium butyrate (NaB), which inhibits histone deacetylase (HDAC), would strengthen fear extinction.
In mice, fear was conditioned to a specific cage by being pa…