Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Functional emergence of the hippocampus in context fear learning in infant rats

Functional emergence of the hippocampus in context fear learning in infant rats The hippocampus is a part of the limbic system and is important for the formation of associative memories, such as acquiring information about the context (e.g., the place where an experience occurred) during emotional learning (e.g., fear conditioning). Here, we assess whether the hippocampus is responsible for pups' newly emerging context learning. In all experiments, postnatal day (PN) 21 and PN24 rat pups received 10 pairings of odor‐0.5 mA shock or control unpaired odor‐shock, odor only, or shock only. Some pups were used for context, cue or odor avoidance tests, while the remaining pups were used for c‐Fos immunohistochemistry to assess hippocampal activity during acquisition. Our results show that cue and odor avoidance learning were similar at both ages, while contextual fear learning and learning‐associated hippocampal (CA1, CA3, and dentate gyrus) activity (c‐Fos) only occurred in PN24 paired pups. To assess a causal relationship between the hippocampus and context conditioning, we infused muscimol into the hippocampus, which blocked acquisition of context fear learning in the PN24 pups. Muscimol or vehicle infusions did not affect cue learning or aversion to the odor at PN21 or PN24. The results suggest that the newly emerging contextual learning exhibited by PN24 pups is supported by the hippocampus. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Hippocampus Wiley

Functional emergence of the hippocampus in context fear learning in infant rats

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/functional-emergence-of-the-hippocampus-in-context-fear-learning-in-AfskdtTiWj

References (119)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
ISSN
1050-9631
eISSN
1098-1063
DOI
10.1002/hipo.20702
pmid
19739248
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The hippocampus is a part of the limbic system and is important for the formation of associative memories, such as acquiring information about the context (e.g., the place where an experience occurred) during emotional learning (e.g., fear conditioning). Here, we assess whether the hippocampus is responsible for pups' newly emerging context learning. In all experiments, postnatal day (PN) 21 and PN24 rat pups received 10 pairings of odor‐0.5 mA shock or control unpaired odor‐shock, odor only, or shock only. Some pups were used for context, cue or odor avoidance tests, while the remaining pups were used for c‐Fos immunohistochemistry to assess hippocampal activity during acquisition. Our results show that cue and odor avoidance learning were similar at both ages, while contextual fear learning and learning‐associated hippocampal (CA1, CA3, and dentate gyrus) activity (c‐Fos) only occurred in PN24 paired pups. To assess a causal relationship between the hippocampus and context conditioning, we infused muscimol into the hippocampus, which blocked acquisition of context fear learning in the PN24 pups. Muscimol or vehicle infusions did not affect cue learning or aversion to the odor at PN21 or PN24. The results suggest that the newly emerging contextual learning exhibited by PN24 pups is supported by the hippocampus. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Journal

HippocampusWiley

Published: Sep 1, 2010

There are no references for this article.