Journal
BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY
Volume 62, Issue 10, Pages 1070-1079Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2007.04.025
Keywords
amygdala; fear conditioning; infant; learning; memory; olfaction; trauma
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Funding
- NICHD NIH HHS [HD33402, R01 HD033402] Funding Source: Medline
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Background: Early life adverse experience alters adult emotional and cognitive development. Here we assess early life learning about adverse experience and its consequences on adult fear conditioning and amygdala activity. Methods: Neonatal rats were conditioned daily from 8-12 days-old with paired odor (conditioned stimulus, CS) .5mA shock, unpaired, odor-only, or naive (no infant conditioning). In adulthood, each infant training group was divided into three adult training groups: paired, unpaired or odor-only, using either the same infant CS odor, or a novel adult CS odor without or with the infant CS present as context. Adults were cue tested for freezing (odor in novel environment), with amygdala C-14 2-DG autoradiography and electrophysiology assessment. Results: Infant paired odor-shock conditioning attenuated adult fear conditioning, but only if the same infant CS odor was used. The C-14 2-DG activity correlated with infant paired odor-shock conditioning produced attenuated amygdala but heightened olfactory bulb activity. Electrophysiological amygdala assessment further suggests early experience causes changes in amygdala processing as revealed by increased paired-pulse facilitation in adulthood. Conclusions: This suggests some enduring effects of early life adversity (shock) are under CS control and dependent upon learning for their impact on later adult fear learning.
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