Fimbria-fornix and entorhinal cortex differential contribution to contextual and cued fear conditioning consolidation in rats

Abstract

The Fimbria-Fornix (FF) and Entorhinal Cortex (EC) are the primary interfaces between the hippocampus and, respectively, subcortical structures and cortical areas. Their mnemonic role has been repeatedly proposed. In order to investigate their role in fear conditioning, FF and EC were subjected to bilateral fully reversible tetrodotoxin (TTX) inactivation during consolidation in adult male Wistar rats that had undergone training for fear conditioning to an acoustic stimulus (CS) and context. TTX was stereotaxically injected into animals of different groups at increasing post-acquisition delays. Memory was assessed as conditioned freezing duration measured during retention testing, performed 72 and 96 h after TTX administration in a counterbalanced manner. The results showed that FF inactivation, performed immediately after conditioning, did not disrupt consolidation of either contextual or auditory fear memory. On the contrary, EC inactivation performed at the same time was followed by both contextual and CS fear response retention impairment. EC inactivation performed 1.5h post-acquisition impaired only contextual fear response retention. EC inactivation performed 24h after acquisition training had no effect on the consolidation process. The present findings show a clearly different role of FF and EC in fear conditioning consolidation in the rat. The results are discussed in relation to their known connections with the hippocampus.