Pereira Dias, Gisele ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7276-2010, Bevilaqua, Mário Cesar do Nascimento, Silveira, Anna Claudia Domingos, Landeira-Fernandez, Jesus and Gardino, Patrícia Franca (2009) Behavioral profile and dorsal hippocampal cells in carioca high-conditioned freezing rats. Behavioural Brain Research, 205 (2). pp. 342-348. ISSN 0166-4328 (Print), 1872-7549 (Online) (doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2009.06.038)

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Abstract

Contextual fear conditioning selection is an important behavioral paradigm for studying the role of genetic variables and their interaction with the surrounding environment in the etiology and development of anxiety disorders. Recently, a new line of animals selectively bred for high levels of freezing in response to contextual cues previously associated with footshock was developed from a Wistar population. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the emotional and cognitive aspects of this new line of animals, which has been named Carioca High-Freezing (CHF). For the characterization of anxious behavior, CHF and control animals were tested in the elevated plus-maze (EPM) and the social interaction test. CHF animals were significantly more anxious than control rats in terms of both the number of entries into EPM open arms and the percentage of time spent in these arms. The time spent in social interaction behavior was also significantly decreased. No statistical differences were found in locomotor activity, as measured by both the number of entries into the closed arms of the EPM and the number of crossings into the social interaction test arena. No differences between CHF and control groups were found in the depression forced swimming test, suggesting that the anxiety trait selected in the CHF line interacted with other emotional systems such as depression. Cognitive aspects of the CHF rats were evaluated in the object recognition task. Results from this test indicated no difference between the two groups. The present study also performed histological analysis of the dorsal hippocampus from CHF and control animals. Results revealed an absence of qualitative and quantitative differences between these two groups of animals in cells located in the dentate gyrus, CA1, and CA3 areas. Therefore, future studies are required to further investigate the possible neural mechanisms involved in the origin and development of the anxious phenotype observed in this model.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Conditioned fear, Anxiety, Animal model
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > School of Human Sciences (HUM)
Last Modified:	04 Jul 2019 14:13
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/23931

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