These researchers were involved in the study (from left to right): Hanna Böke (PhD student), Dr. Katharina Spoida (project lead), Hannah Schulte (PhD student and first author), Maria Worm (PhD student).
Biology
Unlearning Fear Faster
Mice unlearn fear more quickly when certain brain cells are activated. This opens up new approaches to understanding anxiety disorders.
Unlearning fear responses is a fundamental learning process in the brain. It allows us to flexibly react to formerly threatening situations once the danger is no longer present. This mechanism, known in research as “fear extinction,” plays an important role in treating anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorders, among other things. A team working with Dr. Katharina Spoida from the Department of General Zoology and Neurobiology at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has now proven that this process can be influenced and accelerated: If certain nerve cells in the brain are activated, mice lose their learned fear responses considerably faster. The researchers report their findings in the Nature journal Translational Psychiatry from January 10, 2026.
Study shows how the mechanism works
In 2022, the team from Bochum demonstrated in a study that mice without a specific serotonin receptor – 5-HT2C – learn much faster how to reduce their fear response. The current study takes a major step forward and provides an explanation as to how this works.
“We show that nerve cells that produce the corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) represent a core switching point in this process within the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), a specific region of the brain,” says Spoida. “We were also able to demonstrate that the effect of accelerated unlearning can be selectively triggered in genetically unaltered mice, or wild-type mice. Because of this, we identified for the first time a specific mechanism in the brain that can aid in fear extinction.”
Nerve cells can be switched on and off
The researchers used a modern biotechnological process called chemogenetics. It can be seen as a sort of customized on/off switch in the brain. “With this method, we can very precisely determine which nerve cells are active or inactive, and then observe the effect this has on the animals’ fear behavior,” explains Hannah Schulte, first author of the study.
If the CRF neurons are inhibited in genetically modified mice without the 5-HT2C serotonin receptor, the animals lose their learned fear responses considerably slower. When the same cell population is activated in genetically unmodified mice, they unlearn fear more quickly. Through this selective activation, the scientists in Bochum were able for the first time to artificially simulate the effect of the previous study, this time in wild-type mice.
Certain serotonin-dependent nerve cells play a key role
The missing 5-HT2C receptor changes the serotonergic regulation in the BNST such that CRF neurons have a stronger extinction-supporting effect, and fear is unlearned faster.
The findings are also exciting with regard to conventional therapies: Medications like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – often used to treat post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders – also influence the activity of the 5-HT2C receptor in the long term. The findings from the team in Bochum now indicate that this effect could be mediated via the BNST-CRF mechanism, among others, which might also explain why long-term SSRI treatments reduce anxiety even though they often initially increase it.
