Hippocampal damage causes retrograde but not anterograde memory loss for context fear discrimination in rats

There is a substantial body of evidence that the hippocampus (HPC) plays and essential role in context discrimination in rodents. Studies reporting anterograde amnesia (AA) used repeated, alternating, distributed conditioning and extinction sessions to measure context fear discrimination. In additio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Hippocampus 2017-09, Vol.27 (9), p.951-958
Main Authors: Lee, Justin Q., Sutherland, Robert J., McDonald, Robert J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amnesia
Amnesia, Retrograde - etiology
Analysis of Variance
Animals
Brain Injuries - chemically induced
Brain Injuries - complications
Conditioning, Classical - physiology
context discrimination
Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology
Electroshock
Excitatory Amino Acid Agonists - toxicity
Extinction behavior
Fear
Fear conditioning
Freezing Reaction, Cataleptic - physiology
Hippocampus
Hippocampus - pathology
Long term memory
Male
N-Methylaspartate - toxicity
rat
Rats
Rats, Long-Evans
Retrograde amnesia
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Summary:There is a substantial body of evidence that the hippocampus (HPC) plays and essential role in context discrimination in rodents. Studies reporting anterograde amnesia (AA) used repeated, alternating, distributed conditioning and extinction sessions to measure context fear discrimination. In addition, there is uncertainty about the extent of damage to the HPC. Here, we induced conditioned fear prior to discrimination tests and rats sustained extensive, quantified pre‐ or post‐training HPC damage. Unlike previous work, we found that extensive HPC damage spares context discrimination, we observed no AA. There must be a non‐HPC system that can acquire long‐term memories that support context fear discrimination. Post‐training HPC damage caused retrograde amnesia (RA) for context discrimination, even when rats are fear conditioned for multiple sessions. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the role of HPC in long‐term memory.
ISSN:1050-9631
1098-1063
DOI:10.1002/hipo.22759