Cued Fear Conditioning in Carioca High- and Low-Conditioned Freezing Rats (original) (raw)
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Brain Research, 2008
Rats selectively bred for high or low levels of emotionality represent an important and powerful tool to investigate the role of genetic variables in the occurrence of different anxiety disorders. In the present study, albino rats were selectively bred for differences in defensive freezing behavior in response to contextual cues previously associated with footshock, an animal model of general anxiety disorder. The results indicate that these two new lines of rats, which we refer to as Carioca High-Freezing (CHF) and Carioca Low-Freezing (CLF), show a reliable difference in conditioned freezing after three generations of selection.
Panic-like behaviors in Carioca High-and Low-conditioned Freezing rats
Psychology and Neuroscience, 2011
Panic disorder involves both recurrent unexpected panic attacks and persistent concern about having additional attacks. Electrical stimulation of the dorsal periaqueductal gray (dPAG) is an animal model of both panic attack and panic disorder, whereas contextual fear conditioning represents a model of anticipatory anxiety. Previous research indicated that anxiety has an inhibitory effect on panic attack-like behavior. However, still unclear is the role that anticipatory anxiety plays in panic disorder-like behaviors. This issue was investigated with two lines of animals selectively bred for high (Carioca High-Freezing) and low (Carioca Low-Freezing) freezing in response to contextual cues associated with footshock. The results suggest that although anticipatory anxiety might exert an inhibitory effect on the expression of panic attack, it might also facilitate the pathogenesis of panic disorder.
Contextual Fear Extinction and Re-Extinction in Carioca High- and Low-Conditioned Freezing Rats
World Journal of Neuroscience, 2014
We recently reported two novel breeding lines of rats known as Carioca High-and Low-conditioned Freezing (CHF and CLF), based on defensive freezing responses to contextual cues previously associated with electric footshock. The present study used animals of the 8 th generation of our selective breeding program to investigate both contextual fear extinction and re-extinction. The results consistently showed that CHF animals froze more than CLF animals. Long extinction training was able to extinguish phenotypic differences between lines, but the divergence was restored after just one fear reacquisition training session. These differences disappeared again during re-extinction training. The possible neural mechanisms involved in these two types of learning are discussed.
Behavioral profile and dorsal hippocampal cells in carioca high-conditioned freezing rats
Behavioural Brain Research, 2009
Selection for contextual fear conditioning is an important behavioral paradigm for studying the role of genetic variables and their interaction with the surrounding environment in the etiology and development of anxiety disorders. Recently, a new line of animals selectively bred for high levels of freezing in response to contextual cues previously associated with footshock was developed from a Wistar population. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the emotional and cognitive aspects of this new line of animals, which has been named Carioca High-Freezing (CHF). For the characterization of anxious behavior, CHF and control animals were tested in the elevated plus-maze (EPM) and the social interaction test. CHF animals were significantly more anxious than control rats in terms of both the number of entries into EPM open arms and the percentage of time spent in these arms. The time spent in social interaction behavior was also significantly decreased. No statistical differences were found in locomotor activity, as measured by both the number of entries into the closed arms of the EPM and the number of crossings into the social interaction test arena. No differences between CHF and control groups were found in the depression forced swimming test, suggesting that the anxiety trait selected in the CHF line did not interact with affective disorders traits such as those for depression. Cognitive aspects of the CHF rats were evaluated in the object recognition task. Results from this test indicated no difference between the two groups. The present study also encompassed histological analysis of the dorsal hippocampus from CHF and control animals. Results revealed an absence of qualitative and quantitative differences between these two groups of animals in cells located in the dentate gyrus, CA1, and CA3 areas. Therefore, future studies are required to further investigate the possible neural mechanisms involved in the origin and development of the anxious phenotype observed in this model.
Behavior Genetics, 2000
Two Wistar rat lines selectively bred for high (HAB), and low anxiety-related behavior (LAB) on the elevated plus maze were tested for the fear-sensitized acoustic startle response. The study of male rats from the F9 generation revealed a higher anxiety level of HAB rats on the elevated plus maze. However, the LAB rats displayed a higher baseline and fear-sensitized acoustic startle response compared to HAB rats, although the two rat lines did not differ in freezing duration during the interstimulus intervals in the startle experiment (neither before, nor after, footshocks). Counts of neurons immunoreactive for corticotropin-releasing factor and neuropeptide Y in amygdaloid nuclei did not reveal any differences between the two lines, which is in marked contrast to findings in the Roman rat lines ). The data indicate that opposite types of anxiety/fear responses are elicited in HAB/LAB rats in the elevated plus maze and fear-sensitized startle tests. Moreover, the animals displayed a differential fear response in the startle experiment, as assessed by measuring the fear-sensitized startle response and freezing.
Behavioral evaluation of male and female carioca high- and low-freezing rats
Temas em Psicologia, 2014
Recent years have seen growing interest in the development of genetic animal models to investigate the bidirectional relationship between trait anxiety and defensive reactions. The present study further analyzed behavioral correlates of two novel breeding lines of rats, Carioca high-and low-conditioned freezing (CHF and CLF), based on defensive freezing responses to contextual cues previously associated with electric footshock. Male and female rats from the 10th generation were used to assess anxiety-like reactions in the elevated plus maze (EPM), depressive-like behavior in the forced swim test (FST), and aversive memory in the contextual fear conditioning paradigm. In the EPM, female rats showed lower anxiety-like behavior than males, whereas CHF rats were more anxious than CLF rats. The same pattern of results was found in the contextual fear conditioning paradigm. No differences were found between lines or sexes in the FST. Such differences in emotionality responses in the 10th generation of selected rats further indicate a possible use of this model to study correlations between trait anxiety and defensive reactions. The face validity of the model and its use to experimentally simulate generalized anxiety disorder in humans are also discussed.
Behavioral Neuroscience, 2000
In Experiment 1, an auditory conditioned stimulus (CS) was paired with footshock, except when it was preceded by another stimulus (a visual conditioned inhibitor [CI]). After conditioning, all mice displayed less CS-evoked freezing when the CI-CS compound was presented than when the CS was presented alone. However, lesions of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) potentiated CS-evoked freezing on each of the 2 sessions (i.e., CI-CS and CS alone). In Experiment 2, mice were submitted to fear extinction (CS-alone presentation for 3 days). Lesioned mice exhibited a higher level of freezing behavior than controls on each of the 3 sessions. However, lesioned mice and controls displayed the same rate of reduction of freezing over the 3 days of extinction. These data in mice support previous studies in rats, which suggests that the dmPFC is not critical for either conditioned inhibition or extinction of acquired freezing behavior.
Acta neurobiologiae experimentalis, 2011
Contextual conditioning in rats is typically quantified using freezing time or startle amplitude. In this study, we combined both anxiety measures in one procedure and systematically examined the effect of training with 0, 5, 10 or 15 unpaired tone-shock (0.8 mA - 250 ms) presentations on the expression of contextual conditioning in a chronic protocol with two training and testing days. Such a chronic procedure may be valuable as a chronic anxiety model. Training with 5, 10 or 15 explicitly unpaired shocks resulted in significant contextual freezing. There was no significant increase in freezing time from post-test 1 to post-test 2 and there were no differences between the three shocked groups, implying that the different numbers of shocks did not affect the degree of contextual freezing, probably because the ceiling freezing value had already been reached. Surprisingly, we observed no potentiated startle in the conditioned context. To summarize, our protocol produced consistent con...
Physiology & Behavior, 2011
The double, fear-driven "passive avoidance/active avoidance" conflict appearing during acquisition of two-way active avoidance, involves high levels of anxiety and a dominant tendency for freezing responses, which in turn run against the appearance of active escape/avoidance behavior. In the present study, by using a large sample genetically heterogeneous (N/Nih-HS) rats, we have tested the hypothesis that rats showing relatively higher levels of context-conditioned freezing (during the initial trials of that task) should show lower efficiency to acquire two-way avoidance behavior, i.e. the prediction that the initial context-conditioned freezing in the shuttle box would be negatively related to avoidance acquisition efficiency. In agreement with such a hypothesis, the results from the three rat subsamples used show that context-conditioned freezing (during the first 5 inter-trial intervals of the 40-trial two-way avoidance session) is negatively correlated (r= −0.34 to r = −0.64, p b 0.001) with two-way avoidance acquisition, in a way that subgroups of rats with extremely high or low levels of freezing markedly differ in their avoidance performance: "high freezer" rats show much worse avoidance acquisition than "low freezers". Moreover, the relationships of conditioned freezing and avoidance acquisition with baseline and fear-potentiated startle, as well as with unconditioned anxiety (in the elevated zero-maze test), have also been studied. Taken collectively, the results indicate that: (i) context conditioned freezing is a reliable (and negative) predictor of two-way avoidance acquisition; (ii) baseline and fear-potentiated startle responses show positive associations with avoidance responding, and (iii) unconditioned anxiety in the elevated zero-maze is also negatively associated with two-way avoidance acquisition. Such patterns of associations are considered to be very informative in regard to the search for (common or differential) neural and genetic mechanisms of different forms of (unlearned or learned) anxious or fear responses.