Trace and long-delay fear conditioning in the developing rat

Barnet, Robert C.; Hunt, Pamela S.

doi:10.3758/bf03193182

Cited by 44 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Although peri-adolescent mice exhibited normal freezing during conditioning, overall freezing during the recall and extinction session was modestly but statistically higher in this age-group than in adults. Taken together, these data suggest that adolescent mice, particularly during early adolescence, have a greater propensity to acquire and/or express conditioned fear responses than adults, and extend previous work showing that various conditioned fear responses, including freezing, develop in early adolescence in rats (reviewed in [6,23,24,47]). More generally, these findings potentially speak to view that human adolescence is a period of vulnerability to anxiety disorders characterized by abnormalities in emotional memory, such as posttraumatic memory (PTSD) [4,5,44,49].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…For example, adolescent rats have been found to exhibit either lesser, greater or normal levels of anxiety-like behavior in various behavioral assays as compared to adults [9,13,15,18,25,41,43,51]. In addition, a number of studies have shown that conditioned fear responses to footshock in rats emerges in the early adolescent period (reviewed in [6,23,24,47]). While less research has been conducted in mice, relatively lesser anxiety-like behavior and relatively greater exploration of novel environments has been reported in some but not all studies of adolescent mice [1,2,29,34,48].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ontogeny of fear-, anxiety- and depression-related behavior across adolescence in C57BL/6J mice

Hefner¹,

Holmes²

2007

Behavioural Brain Research

168

123

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Adolescence is characterized by behavioral traits such as emotional lability and impulsivity that are associated with increased vulnerability to affective illness and addictions. Research in rodents has found that adolescent rats and mice differ from adults on measures of anxiety-like behavior, noveltyseeking and stress-responsivity. The present study sought to extend these data by evaluating fear-, anxiety-and depression-related behaviors in male C57BL/6J mice aged four (early adolescent), six (peri-adolescent) or eight (early adult) weeks of age. Age-groups were compared on: Pavlovian fear conditioning and extinction, anxiety-like behavior and exploratory locomotion (using elevated plusmaze and novel open field), and depression-related behavior (via forced swim test). Results showed that early adolescent mice exhibited enhanced fear conditioning, but extinguished at a similar rate as adults. There were no major differences in anxiety-like behavior across age-groups, although early adolescent and peri-adolescent mice exhibited less exploratory locomotion than adults. Depressionrelated immobility behavior in the forced swim test was lower in early adolescents than adult mice across three test exposures. Present findings in the C57BL/6J inbred strain add to growing evidence of changes in rodent fear-and stress-related behaviors across the developmental transition from juvenility through adulthood. Understanding the neural basis of these ontogenic changes could provide insight into factors could provide insight into the pathogenesis and treatment of affective disorders that have their origins in adolescence.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontogeny of fear-, anxiety- and depression-related behavior across adolescence in C57BL/6J mice

Hefner¹,

Holmes²

2007

Behavioural Brain Research

168

123

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This has been shown in fear conditioning, where infant and juvenile rats (typically younger than postnatal day [PD] 23), fail to exhibit contextually conditioned freezing 24 h after conditioning, despite their ability to freeze to an explicit cue (Rudy 1993;Stanton 2000;Raineki et al 2009). Furthermore, trace conditioning, a task known to rely on the hippocampus, emerges later in development than delay conditioning, a hippocampus-independent task, in both fear and eyeblink preparations (Moye and Rudy 1987;Ivkovich et al 2000;Barnet and Hunt 2005). Developing rats are similarly impaired in other hippocampus-dependent learning and memory tasks, such as the hidden-platform Morris water maze and conditional delayed alternation task, but not in similar hippocampus-independent tasks, such as visible-platform water maze or a simple position habit t-maze Green and Stanton 1989).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rat pups as young as PD 17 can express conditioned fear after explicit-cue fear conditioning (Rudy 1992(Rudy , 1993Stanton 2000;Barnet and Hunt 2005), indicating that the amygdala and output systems are intact. Although PD 17 rats have demonstrated conditioning to an enhanced context (Brasser and Spear 1998), most studies demonstrate that rats younger than PD 23 cannot demonstrate long-term memory for contextual fear conditioning (Rudy 1993(Rudy , 1994Stanton 2000;Raineki et al 2009), which has been interpreted as a delay in the emergence of hippocampus function.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for hippocampus-dependent contextual learning at postnatal day 17 in the rat

Foster¹,

Burman²

2010

Learn. Mem.

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Long-term memory for fear of an environment (contextual fear conditioning) emerges later in development (postnatal day; PD 23) than long-term memory for fear of discrete stimuli (PD 17). As contextual, but not explicit cue, fear conditioning relies on the hippocampus; this has been interpreted as evidence that the hippocampus is not fully developed until PD 23. Alternatively, the hippocampus may be functional prior to PD 23, but unable to cooperate with the amygdala for fearful learning. The current experiments investigate this by separating the phases of conditioning across developmental stages. Rats were allowed to learn about the context on one day and to form the fearful association on another. Rats exposed to the context on PD 17 exhibited significant fear only when trained and tested a week later (PD 23, 24), but not on consecutive days (PD 18, 19), demonstrating that rats can learn about a context as early as PD 17. Further experiments clarify that it is associative mechanisms that are developing between PD 18 and 23. Finally, the hippocampus was lesioned prior to training to ensure the task is being solved in a hippocampus-dependent manner. These data provide compelling evidence that the hippocampus is functional for contextual learning as early as PD 17, however, its connection to the amygdala or other relevant brain structures may not yet be fully developed.Research in recent decades has yielded a great deal of information regarding the neural substrates of cognitive processes, such as emotional expression and learning and memory in adult organisms, but relatively little regarding the neural substrates underlying these processes in developing organisms. Pavlovian fear conditioning has proven a useful tool for studying cognition in adult organisms (Malenka and Nicoll 1997;Anagnostaras et al. 2001;Maren 2001) and ought to be an especially powerful tool to help uncover the neural substrates of various cognitive processes in adolescent organisms due to its reliance on relatively basic sensory, motor, and affective systems (Campbell and Spear 1972). Indeed, several behavioral and toxicological studies have already adapted methods pioneered in the adult for use in developing animals with great success (Rudy

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“…Additionally, acquisition of long delay eyeblink conditioning was significantly slower in the hippocampal lesioned rats, suggesting that the hippocampus plays a role in its acquisition. Developmental work supports this finding, demonstrating that infant rats can acquire short-delay conditioning, but are impaired at acquiring both long-delay and trace conditioning, which emerges in parallel later in development [41,42]. Therefore, long CS durations provide a useful paradigm to explore the influence of the hippocampus on acquisition without altering the conditioning parameters as drastically as trace conditioning would.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Facilitated acquisition of standard but not long delay classical eyeblink conditioning in behaviorally inhibited adolescents

Caulfield

VanMeenen

Servatius

2015

Behavioural Brain Research

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Trace and long-delay fear conditioning in the developing rat

Cited by 44 publications

References 25 publications

Ontogeny of fear-, anxiety- and depression-related behavior across adolescence in C57BL/6J mice

Ontogeny of fear-, anxiety- and depression-related behavior across adolescence in C57BL/6J mice

Evidence for hippocampus-dependent contextual learning at postnatal day 17 in the rat

Facilitated acquisition of standard but not long delay classical eyeblink conditioning in behaviorally inhibited adolescents

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