4.3 Article

Functional Emergence of the Hippocampus in Context Fear Learning in Infant Rats

Journal

HIPPOCAMPUS
Volume 20, Issue 9, Pages 1037-1046

Publisher

WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/hipo.20702

Keywords

fear conditioning; odor; cue; shock; odor aversion; development

Categories

Funding

  1. NICHD [HD33402]
  2. NSF [IOB-0850527]
  3. Oklahoma Center for Science and Technology (OCAST)
  4. CAPES (Brazil)
  5. EUNICE KENNEDY SHRIVER NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH &HUMAN DEVELOPMENT [R01HD033402] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
  6. NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DEAFNESS AND OTHER COMMUNICATION DISORDERS [R01DC009910] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER

Ask authors/readers for more resources

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. (C) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.3
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available