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Contextual and auditory fear conditioning continue to emerge during the periweaning period in rats.

ABSTRACT: Anxiety disorders often emerge during childhood. Rodent models using classical fear conditioning have shown that different types of fear depend upon different neural structures and may emerge at different stages of development. For example, some work has suggested that contextual fear conditioning generally emerges later in development (postnatal day 23-24) than explicitly cued fear conditioning (postnatal day 15-17) in rats. This has been attributed to an inability of younger subjects to form a representation of the context due to an immature hippocampus. However, evidence that contextual fear can be observed in postnatal day 17 subjects and that cued fear conditioning continues to emerge past this age raises questions about the nature of this deficit. The current studies examine this question using both the context pre-exposure facilitation effect for immediate single-shock contextual fear conditioning and traditional cued fear conditioning using Sprague-Dawley rats. The data suggest that both cued and contextual fear conditioning are continuing to develop between PD 17 and 24, consistent with development occurring the in essential fear conditioning circuit.

SUBMITTER: Burman MA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4076234 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Contextual and auditory fear conditioning continue to emerge during the periweaning period in rats.

Burman Michael A MA Erickson Kristen J KJ Deal Alex L AL Jacobson Rose E RE

PloS one 20140630 6

Anxiety disorders often emerge during childhood. Rodent models using classical fear conditioning have shown that different types of fear depend upon different neural structures and may emerge at different stages of development. For example, some work has suggested that contextual fear conditioning generally emerges later in development (postnatal day 23-24) than explicitly cued fear conditioning (postnatal day 15-17) in rats. This has been attributed to an inability of younger subjects to form a ...[more]

PMID: 24977415

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Project description:A fundamental question in neuroscience is how memories are stored and retrieved in the brain. Many neurological, psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders are associated with cognitive deficits. Therefore characterizing the biological basis of these processes is critical for understanding normal and abnormal brain function. It is known that long-term memory formation requires transcription and translation as well as epigenetic processes that control gene expression. In this study we examined genome-wide gene expression changes during memory consolidation and after memory retrieval. We observe the largest changes in gene expression 30 minutes after memory acquisition and retrieval, and several novel genes were found to be affected by both. Interestingly, acquisition and retrieval of memory down-regulate different processes. Chromatin assembly is down-regulated after memory acquisition whereas RNA processing is down-regulated so after retrieval. Histone variant H2AB levels are reduced following acquisition, while splicing factor Rbfox1 and NMDA receptor-dependent microRNA miR-219 are down-regulated following retrieval. We also show that miR-219 down-regulation after retrieval is accompanied by up-regulation of its target protein CAMKIIÎ³. Our study highlights for the first time the differential involvement of epigenetic mechanisms that control gene expression, such as histone variants and post-transcriptional RNA processing, during memory acquisition and retrieval. 72 total samples were analyzed, including animals trained in a contexual conditioning paradigm (FC) and controls. Tissue was collected at 30 minutes (FC30), 4 hours (FC4), 12 hours (FC12) and 24 hours after FC (FC24) as well as 30 minutes after testing for retrieval of the memory (RT30). Testing was performed at 24 hours after training over a 5-minute interval. Animals that were handled but not trained were dissected at the same time of day to control for variations due to circadian rhythms (CC30, CC4 andCC12). The protocol was repeated over the course of 2 weeks to obtain 9 animals (2 hippocampi) per group, so that 9 independent FC experiments were represented in each time point and all animals for each group were dissected at the exactly the same time of day.

Dataset Information

Contextual and auditory fear conditioning continue to emerge during the periweaning period in rats.

Publications

Contextual and auditory fear conditioning continue to emerge during the periweaning period in rats.

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