[Visual Fear Conditioning in Mice: Comparison with Auditory Fear Conditioning].

Abstract

Up to date, rodent fear conditioning is the most commonly used model of mammalian associative memory in neurobiology. Since the mechanisms of associative memory in this model are mainly studied using audi tory fear conditioning, the question about the generality of this mechanisms in respect to other conditioned stimuli remains open. The aim of this work-was to compare dynamics of visual-and auditory fear memory for- mation and retrieval. We showed that acquisition of freezing in response to visual conditioned stimulus is significantly slower in comparison with the. auditory conditioned stimulus. Moieover, the dynamics of memory retrieval was different in animals, trained to these stimuli, being slower in response to visual conditioned stim- ulus. This may reflect distinct mechanisms of visual and auditory associative memory consolidation or re- trieval in this Model. Our results impose constraints on the generality of conclusiois about the dynamics as- sociative memory formation obtained solely from classical auditory fear conditioning model in mice.