title: The effect of long context exposure on cued conditioning and c-fos expression in the rat forebrain.
abstract: The c-fos expression was used to study the neural substrates of the cued fear conditioning acquisition, preceded by a short exposure versus a long exposure to the conditioning context. A long-context exposure (either during the night or during the day) prior to conditioning, was associated with low freezing in the learning test. Differences in the c-fos expression of CA1, CA3, BL Amygdala, LS and BNST were found between the short- or long-context groups with a pre-exposure before cued conditioning. Ce Amygdala showed no differences in the c-fos expression labeling. We reported the hippocampal c-fos activation during the cued fear conditioning acquisition. Specifically, the CA1 activation could be related with the context-US processing during the CS-US association acquisition, which might prove that the CS-US associations cannot be made without an integrated context participating. The results showed that a long-context exposure prior to cued conditioning produces an inhibition of the CR (freezing), and this phenomenon is related with a specific c-fos expression in CA1, CA3, BL Amygdala, LS and BNST during the fear acquisition.
authors.affiliation: Department of Embryology and Human Anatomy, School of Medicine, Av Blasco Ibanez, 15, University of Valencia, 46010 Valencia, Spain. anaperezvillaba@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Perez-Villalba
authors.forename: Vicent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Teruel-Martí
authors.forename: Amparo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ruiz-Torner
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Olucha-Bordonau
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000009:adverse effects; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D002452:Cell Count / Q000379:methods; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods; D005239:Fear; D046352:Freezing Reaction, Cataleptic / Q000502:physiology; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000502:physiology*; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D007150:Immunohistochemistry / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D016548:Prosencephalon / Q000378:metabolism*; D016760:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-fos / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley
chemical_list: D016760:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-fos