Figure 5. Effect of acute prior stress on auditory-cued fear conditioning.
(A) The experimental design for prior restraint stress (RS) exposure and fear conditioning. Floxed GR and LAGRKO mice were exposed to a 20 min RS and fear-conditioned 1 hr later. Contextual and auditory-cued fear memories were tested 24 and 48 hr after training, respectively. (B) Mice exposed to RS 1 hr before conditioning (brown, RS1h-Floxed GR, n = 11; RS1h-LAGRKO, n = 10) exhibited significantly higher freezing levels than did nonstressed mice (black, Floxed GR, n = 10; LAGRKO, n = 16) during the training session in both genotypes. (C) Mice exposed to RS exhibited significantly higher freezing levels than did nonstressed mice during the contextual fear memory test. (D) During the cued test, floxed GR mice exposed to RS 1 hr before training exhibited significantly lower freezing levels than did the nonstressed floxed GR mice. Previous RS exposure had no effect on auditory-cued fear memory in LAGRKO mice. Data are presented as mean ± S. E. M. *p<0.05; **p<0.001.
Figure 5—figure supplement 1. Restraint stress- and auditory fear conditioning-induced release of corticosterone was comparable between floxed GR and LAGRKO mice.
