Authors: Olivier Deschaux Xigeng Zheng Jennifer Lavigne Ophélie Nachon Carine Cleren JeanLuc Moreau René Garcia
Publish Date: 2012/07/24
Volume: 225, Issue: 1, Pages: 209-216
Abstract
The postextinction exposure of rats to a subconditioning procedure SCP ie retraining with a shock intensity that is too weak to induce by itself significant fear conditioning has been reported to provoke the reemergence of extinguished fear This phenomenon can be prevented by chronic fluoxetine treatmentBecause in previous studies fluoxetine was administered before extinction we first analyzed its effect on the SCPassociated reemergence of auditorycued conditioned fear in rats injected after extinction to avoid any interaction between fluoxetine and extinction learning Next we used the same protocol but replaced the SCP with acute stressWe found that the SCP and acute stress which were carried out 3 weeks after fear extinction similarly provoked the reemergence of extinguished fear in rats injected with vehicle during the 3week period In contrast the animals treated with fluoxetine during this period behaved similarly to those not exposed to an inducer of fear reemergence
Keywords: