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. 2024 Feb 10;30:100616. doi: 10.1016/j.ynstr.2024.100616

Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

Post-stress glucose selectively enhances subsequent fear learning in chronically-stressed rats. Depicted: Schematic illustration of the experiment timeline and the figure panels in which data from the experiment are displayed (panel A). Percent freezing during stress pretreatment (panels B & C, days 1–15), context preexposure (panel D, days 16–21), and context test (panel E, day 23). Weights prior to, during, and following stress pretreatment are also reported (panel F). Rats received either acute (AS) or chronic (CS) exposure to 15 footshocks, or identical context exposure with no shock (No Stress; CN). Rats received daily access to a 40% glucose solution in drinking water (G) or drinking water alone (W) for 6 h immediately following the termination of each session of stress pretreatment. All groups were preexposed (30 min/day) to a novel environment for 6 consecutive days. Twenty-four hours after the termination of preexposure, all groups received a single footshock in the preexposed context. All groups were tested for contextual fear learning 24 h later. All groups that received footshock during stress pretreatment readily reached asymptotic contextual fear conditioning (panels B & C). Groups that received chronic or acute stress showed greater generalized fear compared to the unstressed group (panel D). However, chronically-stressed rats that received post-stress glucose (CSG) exhibited markedly higher levels of generalized fear when compared to those that received water (CSW; panel D). An identical trend was observed during the SELF context test (panel E). CS groups showed weight loss during stress pretreatment that was not blocked by glucose while AS groups showed weight loss following stress pretreatment that was blocked by glucose (panel F). Error bars denote mean ± SEM. *, **** denotes significance (p ≤ .05, p ≤ .0001) compared between indicated groups (horizontal square brackets), compared between each Stress group and CNW (horizontal line), or compared between a specific Stress group and CNW (free-standing). # denotes significance (p ≤ .05) between CSG and CSW (horizontal line).