Fig. 2. Inactivation of the LHb during training blocks cued FC.

A Diagram of the experimental setup: bilateral vehicle/muscimol intra LHb infusions were performed 30 min before FC training. Cued FC was tested 7 days later. During training, rats freely explored the cage for a baseline period of 180 s that was followed by 4 tone-shock pairings (17 s of tone followed by 3 s, 0.6 mA shock) interspaced by 70 s. During memory recall, tone was presented for 60 s after a pre-tone period of 180 s. B Left panel: freezing over time. Dashed line delimits tone presentation. Right panel: average freezing for pre- and tone periods. Freezing during pre-tone period was low and not different between vehicle and muscimol groups (pre-tone freezing: 0.79 ± 0.55% for muscimol group vs. 10.97 ± 5.51% for vehicle group; t₍₂₈₎ = 1.469, p = 0.2828). In contrast, during tone presentation, a highly significant reduction in freezing was observed in the muscimol group (t₍₂₈₎ = 5.396, p < 0.0001, n_vehicle = 8, n_muscimol = 9). Additional statistics can be found in the Statistics details section.