Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Highlight
  • Published:

BEHAVIOURAL NEUROSCIENCE

Bodily balancing of fear

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 23, pages 68–69 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Fear is essential for survival, but animals need to maintain a balance in their fear level so as to avoid risky experiences but still benefit if non-threatening opportunities arise. In the body, fear manifests as heart rate changes, but the neural mechanisms that regulate fear via interoceptive feedback are not well understood. Klein et al. now show that the insular cortex — which processes bodily feedback to the brain — maintains fear balance by integrating interoceptive signals to enhance or weaken extinction learning, depending on the animal’s fear level.

Optogenetic inactivation of insular cortex during extinction learning revealed a bidirectional effect that depends on the intensity of FC experienced, with extinction being enhanced (weak FC) or impaired (strong FC) by inactivation of the insular cortex. Freezing duration during recall was used to assess the fear levels of individual mice (high or low), which revealed that extinction learning depended on the individual fear level only when insular cortex was inhibited. Thus, insular cortex gates extinction learning according to an individual’s fear level.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

Original article

  • Klein, A. S. et al. Fear balance is maintained by bodily feedback to the insular cortex in mice. Science 374, 1010–1015 (2021)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nature Reviews Neuroscience http://www.nature.com/nrn/

    Jake Rogers

Authors
  1. Jake Rogers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jake Rogers.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rogers, J. Bodily balancing of fear. Nat Rev Neurosci 23, 68–69 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-021-00556-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-021-00556-3

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing