Melatonin facilitates extinction, but not acquisition or expression, of conditional cued fear in rats

BMC Neuroscience

Chang-Qi Li²  Xiaoyan Liu¹  Zehua Yang¹  Fulian Huang² 

[1] Department of Physiology, Yiyang Medical College, Yingbin Road 516, Yiyang, Hunan 413000, P.R China;Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Central South University, Tongzipo Road 172, Changsha, Hunan 410013, P.R China

关键词: Rats;    PTSD;    Fear extinction;    Fear conditioning;    Cued fear;    Melatonin;   

Others  :  1091801
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2202-15-86

 received in 2014-04-04, accepted in 2014-07-02,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Previous studies have shown that melatonin is involved in the processes that contribute to learning and memory. At present study, we tested the effects of exogenous melatonin (2.5 mg/kg) on the acquisition, expression and extinction of cued fear in rats.

Results

Results showed that a single afternoon administration 30 min before conditioning has no effect on the acquisition of cued fear. Compared to rats injected with vehicle, rats injected with melatonin 30 min before extinction training presented a significant lower freezing during both extinction training and extinction test phases, however, freezing response did not differ for the initial four trials during extinction training. Melatonin injected immediately after extinction training was ineffective on extinction learning.

Conclusions

These results suggest that melatonin, at the dose applied in this study, facilitates the extinction of conditional cued fear without affecting its acquisition or expression, and melatonin facilitates cued fear extinction only when it is present during extinction training. These findings extend previous research on the melatonin effects on learning and memory and suggest that melatonin may serve as an agent for the treatment of anxiety disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Huang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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