Daniela Schiller | |
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Born | 1972 (age 50–51) Rishon LeZion, Israel |
Alma mater | Tel Aviv University, New York University |
Known for | Study of memory and trauma |
Scientific career | |
Fields | trauma, neuroscience |
Institutions | Mt Sinai School of Medicine |
Daniela Schiller (born October 26, 1972, in Israel [1] ) is a neuroscientist who leads the Affective Neuroscience Lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. [2] She is best known for her work on memory reconsolidation, and on modification of emotional learning and memory. [3] [4] [5]
Schiller was born in Rishon LeZion, Israel. She is the daughter of a Moroccan mother and a Ukrainian father. Schiller's father, Sigmund Schiller, is a survivor of the Holocaust. Schiller is the youngest of four children. She received a bachelor's degree in psychology and philosophy in 1996, and her doctorate in psychobiology from Tel Aviv University in 2004. She was awarded a Fulbright fellowship and worked with Elizabeth A. Phelps and Joseph E. LeDoux at New York University. [6] Schiller plays drums and sings backing vocals for The Amygdaloids [3] [7] and Supersmall. [8]
The goal of Schiller's research is to unravel the neurocognitive mechanisms that make emotional memories malleable, allowing for memory modification and for the adaptive adjustment of emotional and social behavior. [13]
Schiller's research addressed this question by using a behavioral paradigm called reversal learning in conjunction with physiological skin conductance measurements and neuroimaging. In this task, subjects first learned to associate one of two neutral stimuli with an aversive outcome (acquisition stage), and then had to flexibly modify this learning when the second stimulus began to predict the aversive outcome, while the initial predictive stimulus ceased to do so (reversal stage). The study found that responses in the amygdala and the striatum flexibly tracked the predictive aversive value of the conditioned stimuli, and switched their responses from one stimulus to another when reversal occurred. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) also participated albeit in the opposite direction, showing stronger responses to the safe stimuli, but also dissociating ‘naïve’ safe stimuli from stimuli that used to be dangerous but are now safe. [14] In order to identify a general mechanism underlying fear modulation regardless of the particular strategy used, Schiller and Mauricio Delgado demonstrated the overlapping neural systems mediating extinction, reversal and regulation of learned fear. [15] Further research used the reversal learning data to dissociate the different computations performed by the striatum (prediction error) and amygdala (associability) during fear learning. [16] The reversal protocol also helped identifying differences between combat veterans with or without a PTSD diagnosis in how they compute prediction error and update the value of fear predictive stimuli, and the neural tracking of these computations. [17] Schiller's investigation was extended also to instrumental learning of active avoidance, revealing the neural mechanisms that predict successful active coping with threats in the human brain. [18]
To examine the ability to modify emotional memory, Schiller's research focused on reconsolidation, which is a memory process of restabilizing a destabilized memory. [19] Reconsolidation can be blocked using pharmacological agents, [20] or non-invasive behavioral interference such as new motor learning during the reconsolidation of motor memories, [21] new episodic learning during reconsolidation of declarative memory, [22] and extinction learning during the reconsolidation of fear memory. [23] Schiller's research demonstrated the interference of reconsolidation of fear memory using extinction in humans. [24] One failure to reproduce this latter finding in an independent study [25] or to validate the article's claims using the original data [26] have cast doubts on whether it can be replicated. [27] However, the authors contend that it is valid, [28] the original data is publicly available and replicates, [28] and of subsequent replications, about 80% (~50 experiments) were successful. [28]
Additional research demonstrated retrieval-extinction interference in mice, [29] [30] [31] [32] rats, [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] and humans. [45] [46] [42] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] Additional demonstrations of retrieval-extinction were shown in juvenile rats [59] and adolescents humans. [60] Variations of the effect include retrieval followed by vicarious extinction [61] and imaginal extinction. [62] The retrieval-extinction procedure was also effective in clinical populations, including heroine addicts, [39] tobacco smokers, [63] PTSD [64] and spider phobics [56] with long-lasting effects. [65] Some forms of therapy, such as coherence therapy, are built on the principles of memory reconsolidation and are designed to maximally optimize this process. [66] [67] [68] [69] Studies have also demonstrated engram specific manipulation of retrieval-extinction on remote memories. [70] The Epigenetic priming of behavioral memory updating was shown to enable retrieval-extinction interference. [71] Additional conceptual replications and demonstrations of reconsolidation updating using other forms of behavioral and non-invasive interferences have been reported. [72] [73] [74] [75] Some studies failed to replicate retrieval-extinction effects and disputed the results. [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81] [82] [83] [84] [85] [86] [87] [88] Theoretical formulations [89] and empirical work suggest that inconsistencies in reconsolidation effects may depend on the degree of memory destabilization, as not every memory recall involves neural destabilization; or on the efficacy of the interference, which could differ across individuals and populations. [90] [91] [19] [92] [57]
Using real-time fMRI, Schiller's research demonstrated that external motivational cues interact with neural substrates of motor imagery. The study also showed that neural regions that mediate motor imagery were synchronized with motor regions that produce actions. [93] Another study extracted the whole brain signature of learned fear and demonstrate that fear responses could be extinguished by imagining of the conditioned stimuli. Imagined extinction engaged brain regions that were also recruited by actual extinction, including the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Neural activity in the nucleus accumbens predicted the ability to successfully extinguish fear by using imagination. [94]
The goal of this line of research is to uncover the neural representation of social relationships. Schiller's research have shown that forming first impressions recruits brain regions involved in emotion and valuation processes, including the amygdala and posterior cingulate cortex. Neural responses in these regions during an initial social encounter, predict subsequent impressions. This suggests that the attribution of social value to people and to things relies on similar basic neural mechanism rather than specialized neural circuits. [95] Another line of research examines how the brain tracks dynamic social structure as people interact with others. To address this, Schiller's team created a social game in which participants arrive to an imaginary town and need to find a job and a place to live by interacting with the town's people. The study found that the location of each character relative to the participant in each interaction could be described by polar coordinates in a two-dimensional axis system of power and affiliation, and that these coordinates were encoded throughout the game by the hippocampus and the posterior cingulate cortex. [96] The findings helped merging the divergent views of hippocampal function as a spatial navigation system versus a hub of episodic memories, and instead support the notion that the hippocampus represents a host of cognitive maps on various domains of experiences and across multiple dimensions. [97] [98] [99]
The amygdala is one of two almond-shaped clusters of nuclei located deep and medially within the temporal lobes of the brain's cerebrum in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown to perform a primary role in the processing of memory, decision making, and emotional responses, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system. The term "amygdala" was first introduced by Karl Friedrich Burdach in 1822.
The limbic system, also known as the paleomammalian cortex, is a set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus, immediately beneath the medial temporal lobe of the cerebrum primarily in the forebrain.
The mesolimbic pathway, sometimes referred to as the reward pathway, is a dopaminergic pathway in the brain. The pathway connects the ventral tegmental area in the midbrain to the ventral striatum of the basal ganglia in the forebrain. The ventral striatum includes the nucleus accumbens and the olfactory tubercle.
The olfactory bulb is a neural structure of the vertebrate forebrain involved in olfaction, the sense of smell. It sends olfactory information to be further processed in the amygdala, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the hippocampus where it plays a role in emotion, memory and learning. The bulb is divided into two distinct structures: the main olfactory bulb and the accessory olfactory bulb. The main olfactory bulb connects to the amygdala via the piriform cortex of the primary olfactory cortex and directly projects from the main olfactory bulb to specific amygdala areas. The accessory olfactory bulb resides on the dorsal-posterior region of the main olfactory bulb and forms a parallel pathway. Destruction of the olfactory bulb results in ipsilateral anosmia, while irritative lesions of the uncus can result in olfactory and gustatory hallucinations.
Pavlovian fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events. It is a form of learning in which an aversive stimulus is associated with a particular neutral context or neutral stimulus, resulting in the expression of fear responses to the originally neutral stimulus or context. This can be done by pairing the neutral stimulus with an aversive stimulus. Eventually, the neutral stimulus alone can elicit the state of fear. In the vocabulary of classical conditioning, the neutral stimulus or context is the "conditional stimulus" (CS), the aversive stimulus is the "unconditional stimulus" (US), and the fear is the "conditional response" (CR).
Dopaminergic pathways in the human brain are involved in both physiological and behavioral processes including movement, cognition, executive functions, reward, motivation, and neuroendocrine control. Each pathway is a set of projection neurons, consisting of individual dopaminergic neurons.
Affective neuroscience is the study of how the brain processes emotions. This field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood. The basis of emotions and what emotions are remains an issue of debate within the field of affective neuroscience.
The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a prefrontal cortex region in the frontal lobes of the brain which is involved in the cognitive process of decision-making. In non-human primates it consists of the association cortex areas Brodmann area 11, 12 and 13; in humans it consists of Brodmann area 10, 11 and 47.
Joseph E. LeDoux is an American neuroscientist whose research is primarily focused on survival circuits, including their impacts on emotions such as fear and anxiety. LeDoux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University, and director of the Emotional Brain Institute, a collaboration between NYU and New York State with research sites at NYU and the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, New York. He is also the lead singer and songwriter in the band The Amygdaloids.
The reward system is a group of neural structures responsible for incentive salience, associative learning, and positively-valenced emotions, particularly ones involving pleasure as a core component. Reward is the attractive and motivational property of a stimulus that induces appetitive behavior, also known as approach behavior, and consummatory behavior. A rewarding stimulus has been described as "any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to make us approach and consume it is by definition a reward". In operant conditioning, rewarding stimuli function as positive reinforcers; however, the converse statement also holds true: positive reinforcers are rewarding.
Coherence therapy is a system of psychotherapy based in the theory that symptoms of mood, thought and behavior are produced coherently according to the person's current mental models of reality, most of which are implicit and unconscious. It was founded by Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley in the 1990s. It has been considered among the most well respected postmodern/constructivist therapies.
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is a part of the prefrontal cortex in the mammalian brain. The ventral medial prefrontal is located in the frontal lobe at the bottom of the cerebral hemispheres and is implicated in the processing of risk and fear, as it is critical in the regulation of amygdala activity in humans. It also plays a role in the inhibition of emotional responses, and in the process of decision-making and self-control. It is also involved in the cognitive evaluation of morality.
The basolateral amygdala, or basolateral complex, consists of the lateral, basal and accessory-basal nuclei of the amygdala. The lateral nuclei receives the majority of sensory information, which arrives directly from the temporal lobe structures, including the hippocampus and primary auditory cortex. The basolateral amygdala also receives dense neuromodulatory inputs from ventral tegmental area (VTA), locus coeruleus (LC), and basal forebrain, whose integrity are important for associative learning. The information is then processed by the basolateral complex and is sent as output to the central nucleus of the amygdala. This is how most emotional arousal is formed in mammals.
The Intercalatedcells of the amygdala are GABAergic neurons situated between the basolateral and central nuclei of the amygdala that play a significant role in inhibitory control over the amygdala. They regulate amygdala-dependent emotional processing like fear memory and social behavior. Their function has been best studied with selective ITC ablation which impairs fear extinction, fear generalization, and social behavior. Studies have begun to recognize that ITC clusters may be implicated in reward, addiction, and withdrawal circuits given their heavy expression of dopamine and opioid receptors.
Memory consolidation is a category of processes that stabilize a memory trace after its initial acquisition. A memory trace is a change in the nervous system caused by memorizing something. Consolidation is distinguished into two specific processes. The first, synaptic consolidation, which is thought to correspond to late-phase long-term potentiation, occurs on a small scale in the synaptic connections and neural circuits within the first few hours after learning. The second process is systems consolidation, occurring on a much larger scale in the brain, rendering hippocampus-dependent memories independent of the hippocampus over a period of weeks to years. Recently, a third process has become the focus of research, reconsolidation, in which previously consolidated memories can be made labile again through reactivation of the memory trace.
The management of traumatic memories is important when treating mental health disorders such as post traumatic stress disorder. Traumatic memories can cause life problems even to individuals who do not meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder. They result from traumatic experiences, including natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis; violent events such as kidnapping, terrorist attacks, war, domestic abuse and rape. Traumatic memories are naturally stressful in nature and emotionally overwhelm people's existing coping mechanisms.
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, it would be impossible for language, relationships, or personal identity to develop. Memory loss is usually described as forgetfulness or amnesia.
Many experiments have been done to find out how the brain interprets stimuli and how animals develop fear responses. The emotion, fear, has been hard-wired into almost every individual, due to its vital role in the survival of the individual. Researchers have found that fear is established unconsciously and that the amygdala is involved with fear conditioning.
Nadine Gogolla is a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany as well as an Associate Faculty of the Graduate School for Systemic Neuroscience. Gogolla investigates the neural circuits underlying emotion to understand how the brain integrates external cues, feeling states, and emotions to make calculated behavioral decisions. Gogolla is known for her discovery using machine learning and two-photon microscopy to classify mouse facial expressions into emotion-like categories and correlate these facial expressions with neural activity in the insular cortex.
Moriel Zelikowsky is a neuroscientist at University of Utah School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies the brain circuits and neural mechanisms underlying stress, fear, and social behavior. Her previous work includes fear and the hippocampus, and the role of neuropeptide Tac2 in social isolation.
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