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Hippocampal damage causes retrograde but not anterograde memory loss for context fear discrimination in rats
Author(s) -
Lee Justin Q.,
Sutherland Robert J.,
McDonald Robert J.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
hippocampus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.767
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1098-1063
pISSN - 1050-9631
DOI - 10.1002/hipo.22759
Subject(s) - anterograde amnesia , context (archaeology) , retrograde amnesia , extinction (optical mineralogy) , hippocampus , hippocampal formation , neuroscience , psychology , fear conditioning , memory consolidation , amnesia , cognitive psychology , amygdala , chemistry , biology , paleontology , mineralogy
There is a substantial body of evidence that the hippocampus (HPC) plays and essential role in context discrimination in rodents. Studies reporting anterograde amnesia (AA) used repeated, alternating, distributed conditioning and extinction sessions to measure context fear discrimination. In addition, there is uncertainty about the extent of damage to the HPC. Here, we induced conditioned fear prior to discrimination tests and rats sustained extensive, quantified pre‐ or post‐training HPC damage. Unlike previous work, we found that extensive HPC damage spares context discrimination, we observed no AA. There must be a non‐HPC system that can acquire long‐term memories that support context fear discrimination. Post‐training HPC damage caused retrograde amnesia (RA) for context discrimination, even when rats are fear conditioned for multiple sessions. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the role of HPC in long‐term memory.