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Role of Hippocampus in Contextual Fear COnditioning

SA nospam at nospam.net
Sat Dec 30 01:39:26 EST 2000


In article <918le6$j0c$1 at news.surfnet.nl>, "Filip van den Bergh" 
<F.S.vandenBergh at students.fss.uu.nl> wrote:

> I was wondering what solutions readers of this newsgroup found on the
> inconsistent findings on the function of the hippocampus in contextual 
> fear
> conditioning. I'm hoping this is a correct NG to post this.
> Kim and Fanselow (1993) found that a damaged hippocampus does not inhibit
> unimodal fear conditioning measured by freezing, but it does inhibit
> contextual fear conditioning measured by freezing. McNish, Gewirtz and 
> Davis
> (1997) found that the hippocampus inhibits freezing, but not
> fear-potentiated startle, and using this information they found that 
> animals
> with a damaged hippocampus can still associate fear with a specific 
> context.
> This can be explained by stating that the lesioned hippocampus somehow
> inhibits the freeze response. This however, is not consistent with Kim 
> and
> Fanselow's results, as they did find freezing to a unimodal cue in 
> animals
> with a damaged hippocampus.
> I read the current articles, but I was wondering if anybody had some
> revolutionary idea.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Filip van den Bergh
> 
> 

Why not read my paper, where we address this issue specifically:

Anagnostaras, Maren, & Fanselow 1999 in J Neurosci

We also have a good review in Trends in Cognitive Sciences regarding 
this (Maren, Anagnostaras, & Fanselow, 1998). It can be hard to find. If 
you email me (stephan at ucla.edu) I can send you a copy of both.

Later,
S






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