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Alleviation of infantile amnesia in rats by means of a pharmacological contextual state
Author(s) -
Richardson Rick,
Riccio David C.,
Jonke Theresa
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.420160607
Subject(s) - amnesia , forgetting , weanling , psychology , pentobarbital , retrograde amnesia , saline , developmental psychology , taste aversion , spontaneous recovery , neuroscience , anesthesia , medicine , cognitive psychology , taste
Abstract Although a number of studies have demonstrated that the relatively rapid rate of forgetting in young rats (i.e., infantile amnesia) can be alleviated by various reminder treatments, the possibility of enhancing retention by other procedures seems largely unexplored. Given the putative importance of contextual cues as sources of memory retrieval, this experiment examined whether the presence of a distinctive pharmacological state at training and testing could override infantile amnesia. Weanling rats were given pentobarbital or saline prior to Pavlovian fear‐conditioning. When tested 1 week later, subjects in the same‐state drug condition showed better retention than the same‐state saline group. This finding extends previous work on memory recovery in young animals by demonstrating alleviation of infantile amnesia without a re‐exposure to the CS or UCS during the retention interval.