Date of Award
12-2015
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Psychology
Abstract
Studying learning and memory through the methods of Pavlovian fear conditioning has been a topic of behavioral neuroscience research for decades. Anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder can be modeled in rodents through fear conditioning. This study took on a different approach to study the learning and recall of a fear memory by using a within subjects group. This group was tested at both a recent and remote interval. The recent timepoint was three days after conditioning and the remote timepoint was thirty-one days after conditioning. The timepoints are used to observe the effect the passage of time has on a fear memory, and multiple tests are used to model exposures someone with PTSD might experience. The time spent between acquisition and testing and the number of tests did have an effect on the percent freezing of each group. Remotely tested animals had higher freezing levels than the recently tested group. The group tested twice had some animals increasing in freezing and others decreasing in freezing at the later test point. To investigate the neural correlates of these differences c-Fos was stained for in the Basolateral amygdala complex to signify neuronal activation, and GAD-65 for neuronal inhibition.
Recommended Citation
Zambetti, Peter, "Role of Recent and Remote Context Exposures on Incubation of Fear Memories" (2015). Psychology. 28.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_psych/28