Elucidating the mechanisms of fear extinction in developing animals: a special case of NMDA receptor-independent extinction in adolescent rats.

ABSTRACT: NMDA receptors (NMDARs) are considered critical for the consolidation of extinction but recent work challenges this assumption. Namely, NMDARs are not required for extinction retention in infant rats as well as when extinction training occurs for a second time (i.e., reextinction) in adult rats. In this study, a possible third instance of NMDAR-independent extinction was tested. Although adolescents typically exhibit impaired extinction retention, rats that are conditioned as juveniles and then given extinction training as adolescents (JuvCond-AdolesExt) have good extinction retention. Unexpectedly, this good extinction retention is not associated with an up-regulation of a synaptic plasticity marker in the medial prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in extinction consolidation. In the c

SUBMITTER: Bisby MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5855527 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature