Elsevier

Neuroscience Letters

Volume 460, Issue 2, 28 August 2009, Pages 175-179
Neuroscience Letters

The anterior cingulate cortex is involved in retrieval of long-term/long-lasting but not short-term memory for step-through inhibitory avoidance in rats

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2009.05.032Get rights and content

Abstract

It is known that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is involved in the formation of contextual fear memory. It has been shown that the ACC is important for the retrieval of long-term contextual fear memory. In order to further examine the role of the ACC in fear memory, we investigated the effects of chemical lesion to or reversible inactivation of the ACC on the retrieval of long-term and short-term step-through inhibitory avoidance (IA) memory. Chemical lesion to the ACC by quinolinic acid severely impaired the retrieval of 15-day and 29-day memories for one-trial step-through IA. Pre-retrieval inactivation of the ACC by locally infusing muscimol, a selective GABAA receptor agonist, produced a severe deficit in 7-day, 4-day and 1-day IA memories, with no effect on 2-h and 6-h memories. Thus, the ACC is required for the retrieval of long-term/long-lasting IA memory, but is dispensable for short-term one.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants to Bao-Ming Li from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2006CB500807), the Ministry of Education of China (Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30611120530; 30821002). Technical assistance of Xu Kai-jing is gratefully acknowledged.

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