Differential involvement of amygdala and cortical NMDA receptors activation upon encoding in odor fear memory

  1. Anne-Marie Mouly1
  1. 1Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon, INSERM U1028, CNRS UMR5292, University Lyon1, Lyon, France
  2. 2INRA, Nutrition et Neurobiologie Intégrée, UMR 1286, Bordeaux, France
  3. 3Université de Bordeaux, Nutrition et Neurobiologie Intégrée, Bordeaux, France
  1. Corresponding author: annemarie.mouly{at}cnrs.fr

Abstract

Although the basolateral amygdala (BLA) plays a crucial role for the acquisition of fear memories, sensory cortices are involved in their long-term storage in rats. However, the time course of their respective involvement has received little investigation. Here we assessed the role of the glutamatergic N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors in the BLA and olfactory cortex at discrete moments of an odor fear conditioning session. We showed that NMDA receptors in BLA are critically involved in odor fear acquisition during the first association but not during the next ones. In the cortex, NMDA receptor activation at encoding is not necessary for recent odor fear memory while its role in remote memory storage needs further investigation.

  • Received July 25, 2014.
  • Accepted August 8, 2014.

This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first 12 months after the full-issue publication date (see http://learnmem.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After 12 months, it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

| Table of Contents