Corticosterone administration after a single-trial contextual fear conditioning does not influence the strength and specificity of recent and remote memory in rats.
Physiol Behav
; 171: 175-180, 2017 03 15.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-28082245
It is well established that corticosterone (CORT) enhances memory consolidation of emotionally arousing experiences. Despite emotional memories being usually referred to as well remembered for long periods, there are no studies that have investigated the effects of CORT in modulating the duration and specificity of memory. In the present study, we trained Wistar rats in a single-trial contextual fear conditioning protocol and injected CORT (0.3, 1.0 or 3.0mg/kg), immediately after training, to investigate its effects on memory consolidation. Rats were tested 2 and 29days after the training session or only 29days after training to assess recent or remote memory. Our results show that animals tested for recent memory discriminated the training context from a novel one, while those tested only for remote memory generalized the fear response to both contexts. Animals tested for remote memory after being tested for recent memory were able to discriminate both contexts. These results support the literature regarding memory specificity and duration. However, CORT treatment, even at the dose of 1.0mg/kg that effectively enhanced the plasmatic hormone levels, did not affect the strength or the specificity of memory in either recent or remote memory tests. We hypothesize that the lack of effect of CORT treatment could be due to the low arousing training experience of the single-trial protocol which, despite being sufficient to induce significant recent and remote memory consolidation, may not be sufficient to allow the memory-enhancing effect of CORT.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Rememoração Mental
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Corticosterona
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Condicionamento Clássico
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Medo
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Memória de Longo Prazo
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Anti-Inflamatórios
Tipo de estudo:
Guideline
Limite:
Animals
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Physiol Behav
Ano de publicação:
2017
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Brasil
País de publicação:
Estados Unidos