CA3 NMDA Receptors are Required for the Rapid Formation of a Salient Contextual Representation
The acquisition of Pavlovian fear learning engages the hippocampus when the conditioned stimuli are multimodal or temporally isolated from the unconditioned stimuli. By subjecting CA3-NR1 KO mice to conditioning protocols that incorporate time-dependent components, we found that the loss of plastici...
Main Authors: | , |
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Other Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Wiley Blackwell,
2012-11-15T17:45:15Z.
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | Get fulltext |
Summary: | The acquisition of Pavlovian fear learning engages the hippocampus when the conditioned stimuli are multimodal or temporally isolated from the unconditioned stimuli. By subjecting CA3-NR1 KO mice to conditioning protocols that incorporate time-dependent components, we found that the loss of plasticity at recurrent CA3 synapses resulted in a deficits in contextual conditioning specifically when the exposure to the context was brief or when the unconditioned stimulus was signaled with a competing, predictive unimodal stimulus. Our results suggest CA3 contributes both speed and salience to contextual processing and support the theory of competition between multimodal and unimodal conditioned stimuli for associative learning. |
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