title: Reinstatement of an extinguished fear conditioned response in infant rats.
abstract: Although it is currently accepted that the extinction effect reflects new context-dependent learning, this is not so clear during infancy, because some studies did not find recovery of the extinguished conditioned response (CR) in rodents during this ontogenetic stage. However, recent studies have shown the return of an extinguished CR in infant rats. The present study analyzes the possibility of recovering an extinguished CR with a reinstatement procedure in a fear conditioning paradigm, on PD17 (Experiments 1-4) and on PD24 (Experiment 5), while exploring the role of the olfactory content of the context upon the reinstatement effect during the preweanling period. Preweanling rats expressed a previously extinguished CR after a single experience with an unsignaled US. Furthermore, this result was only found when subjects were trained and tested in contexts that included an explicit odor, but not in standard experimental cages. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrated the reinstatement effect on PD24 in a standard context. These results support the notion that extinction during infancy has the same characteristics as those described for extinction that occurs in adulthood. Instead of postulating a different mechanism for extinction during infancy, we propose that it may be more accurate to view the problem in terms of the variables that may differentially modulate the extinction effect according to the stages of ontogeny.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Investigación Médica M. y M. Ferreyra, IMMF-INIMEC-CONICET-UNIVERSIDAD NACIAONAL DE CÓRDOBA, Friuli 2434, Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: Damian A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Revillo
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Investigación Médica M. y M. Ferreyra, IMMF-INIMEC-CONICET-UNIVERSIDAD NACIAONAL DE CÓRDOBA, Friuli 2434, Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: Gastón
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Trebucq
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Investigación Médica M. y M. Ferreyra, IMMF-INIMEC-CONICET-UNIVERSIDAD NACIAONAL DE CÓRDOBA, Friuli 2434, Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: Maria G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Paglini
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Investigación Médica M. y M. Ferreyra, IMMF-INIMEC-CONICET-UNIVERSIDAD NACIAONAL DE CÓRDOBA, Friuli 2434, Córdoba, Argentina carlosargr@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Arias
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D004597:Electroshock / Q000009:adverse effects; D005108:Extinction, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear; D046352:Freezing Reaction, Cataleptic / Q000502:physiology; D009812:Odorants; D051381:Rats