Mechanisms of emotional learning in normal and epileptic brain

Studies on fear conditioning have provided important information that has helped to reveal the basis of mnemonic processing at the structural, cellular and molecular level. Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), as a pathological process that leads to damage of the temporal lobe structure critically involved in fear conditioning, may serve as a useful model system to study mechanisms of impaired fear learning. Analyses of animal and human data indicate that both connectional and molecular changes underlying TLE may be responsible for the impairment. The amygdala–hippocampal pathway, which is severely damaged during TLE, may especially contribute to that. On the other hand, understanding the functional significance of molecular changes in the epileptic brain during emotional learning may help to introduce therapies reducing mnemonic impairment associated with temporal lobe pathologies.