Publications by Michael Kintscher

A striatal circuit balances learned fear in the presence and absence of sensory cues

Ralf Schneggenburger, Olexiy Kochubey, Michael Kintscher

During fear learning, defensive behaviors like freezing need to be finely balanced in the presence or absence of threat-predicting cues (conditioned stimulus, CS). Nevertheless, the circuits underlying such balancing are largely unknown. Here, we investiga ...

eLIFE SCIENCES PUBL LTD2023

A VTA to Basal Amygdala Dopamine Projection Contributes to Signal Salient Somatosensory Events during Fear Learning

Ralf Schneggenburger, Olexiy Kochubey, Wei Tang, Michael Kintscher

The amygdala is a brain area critical for the formation of fear memories. However, the nature of the teaching signal(s) that drive plasticity in the amygdala are still under debate. Here, we use optogenetic methods to investigate the contribution of ventra ...

2020

Optogenetic Stimulation of Basal Forebrain Parvalbumin Neurons Activates the Default Mode Network and Associated Behaviors

Ralf Schneggenburger, Jayakrishnan Harikrishnavilas Raveendran Nair, Gregor Rainer, Laura Lozano Montes, Michael Kintscher

Activation of the basal forebrain (BF) has been associated with increased attention, arousal, and a heightened cortical representation of the external world. In addition, BF has been implicated in the regulation of the default mode network (DMN) and associ ...

2020

RETRACTED: Insular cortex processes aversive somatosensory information and is crucial for threat learning

Ralf Schneggenburger, Olexiy Kochubey, Wei Tang, Michael Kintscher, Shriya Palchaudhuri, Emmanuelle Marie Brigitte Berret, Denys Osypenko

Learning about threats is essential for survival. During threat learning, an innocuous sensory percept such as a tone acquires an emotional meaning when paired with an aversive stimulus such as a mild footshock. The amygdala is critical for threat memory f ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2019

A cortico-thalamic-hippocampal circuit for remote fear memory attenuation

Ralf Schneggenburger, Johannes Gräff, Michael Kintscher, Bianca Ambrogina Silva

Springer Wien2017

Subunit-selective N-Methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) Receptor Signaling through Brefeldin A-resistant Arf Guanine Nucleotide Exchange Factors BRAG1 and BRAG2 during Synapse Maturation

Michael Kintscher

The maturation of glutamatergic synapses in the CNS is regulated by NMDA receptors (NMDARs) that gradually change from a GluN2B- to a GluN2A-dominated subunit composition during postnatal development. Here we show that NMDARs control the activity of the sm ...

Amer Soc Biochemistry Molecular Biology Inc2016