Fear is a well-characterized biological response to threatening or stressful situations in humans and other Kids Pajamas social animals.Importantly, fearful stimuli in the natural environment are likely to be encountered concurrently by a group of animals.The modulation of fear acquisition and fear memory by a group as opposed to an individual experience, however, remains largely unknown.
Here, we demonstrate a robust reduction in fear memory to an aversive event undertaken in a group despite similar fear learning between individually- and group-conditioned rats.This reduction Chainsaw Bars persists outside the group confines, appears to be a direct outcome of group cognizance and is counteracted by loss of olfactory signaling among the group members.These results show that a group experience of fear can be protective and suggest that distinct neural pathways from those classically studied in individuals modulate collective fear memories.