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ERIC Number: EJ1223582
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Aug
Pages: 7
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1072-0502
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Cue-Dependent Safety and Fear Learning in a Discriminative Auditory Fear Conditioning Paradigm in the Mouse
Takemoto, Makoto; Song, Wen-Jie
Learning & Memory, v26 n8 p284-290 Aug 2019
Discrimination between sensory stimuli associated with safety and threat is crucial for behavioral decisions. Discriminative conditioning paradigms with two acoustic conditioned stimuli (one paired with shock [CS+], the other unpaired with shock [CS-]) have been widely used as an experimental model for fear learning. However, no attention has been paid to the effect of the CS- on safety in the paradigms, because the CS- served as a neutral cue or elevated the freezing level due to fear generalization although less effectively than the CS+. By using a noise and a tone as two acoustic CSs in a discriminative auditory fear conditioning (AFC) paradigm, here we demonstrate that mice learn safety for the CS- while showing fear for the CS+ with opposing emotional behaviors. We found that after learning mice exhibited a significant suppression of context-dependent freezing during the CS-, but not during the CS+, indicating learned safety without fear generalization for the CS-. In contrast, the mice showed an enhanced level of freezing during the CS+ even in a novel spatial context, indicating cued fear for the CS+. Moreover, the CS+ also induced rapid defensive behaviors, whereas the CS- disinhibited normal exploratory behaviors. On the other hand, mice showed no significant suppression of contextual fear during the CS- in a paradigm with a pair of tone CSs at different frequencies, although they clearly discriminated the two tones. These results suggest our AFC paradigm with the noise and tone CSs as a useful experimental model for cue-dependent discriminative learning of safety and threat.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. 500 Sunnyside Boulevard, Woodbury, NY 11797-2924. Tel: 800-843-4388; Tel: 516-367-8800; Fax: 516-422-4097; e-mail: cshpres@cshl.edu; Web site: http://learnmem.cshlp.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A