Francesco Ferraguti. Head of Institute of Pharmacology 
Medical Unviersity of Innsbruck. Website
Institute of Pharmacology. Peter-Mayer-Straße 1a, 6020 Innsbruck
Reseach subject
Amygdala inhibitory circuits, fear learning, anxiety disorders, interneurons, metabotropic glutamate receptors
Summary
The laboratory is primarily interested in understanding the neural mechanisms mediating emotional information processing in the amygdala, and the role that classical neurotransmitters have, e.g. glutamate and GABA, on the acquisition, storage and inhibition of fear memories. Although a large body of in vivo work has suggested that fear and extinction of fear are encoded by specific neuronal activity patterns with characteristic temporal dynamics, neuroanatomical information on the underlying neural networks is still largely lacking. A first step in our characterization of these networks is the identification of the main cell types based on their anatomical, pharmacological and physiological features, particularly in the basolateral complex and intercalated cell masses of the rodent amygdala. Currently, taking advantage of recent developments in molecular genetics, viral trans-synaptic tracing and novel ultrastructural techniques (e.g. SDS-digested freeze-fracture replica immunogold labelling), we investigate long-range connections between amygdala GABAergic neurons and cortical or subcortical brain structures as well as structural synaptic plasticity of amygdala inhibitory networks.
Major Achievements: Identification of novel cell types of the intercalated cell masses of the amygdala and their participation in amygdala neural circuits processing sensory stimuli.
Future Goals: Characterization of the longrange connections of amygdala GABAergic neurons and their behaviourally-relevant plasticity.
Publications
- Busti D., Geracitano R., Whittle N., Dalezios Y., Mańko M., Kaufmann W., Sätzler K., Singewald N., Capogna M. and Ferraguti F. (2011) Different fear states engage distinct networks within the intercalated cell clusters of the amygdala. J Neurosci., 31:5131-44.
- Bienvenu T.C.M., Busti D., Micklem B.R., Mansouri M., Magill P.J., Ferraguti F.*, Capogna M.* (2015) Large intercalated neurons of amygdala relay noxious sensory information. J. Neurosci. 35:2044-57.
- Asede D., Bosch D., Lüthi A., Ferraguti F., Ehrlich I. (2015) Sensory inputs to intercalated cells provide fear-learning modulated inhibition to the basolateral amygdala. Neuron 86:541-54.
- Botta P., Demmou L., Kasugai Y., Markovic M., Xu C., Fadok J.P., Lu T., Poe M.M., Xu L., Cook J.M., Rudolph U., Sah P., Ferraguti F., Lüthi A. (2015) Regulating anxiety with extrasynaptic inhibition. Nature Neurosci. 18:1493-500.
- Bazelot M., Bocchio M., Kasugai Y., Fischer D., Dodson P.D., Ferraguti F., Capogna M. (2015) Hippocampal theta input to the amygdala shapes feedforward inhibition to gate heterosynaptic plasticity. Neuron 87:1290-303.