Moyer James R, Brown Thomas H
Department of Psychology, Yale University, USA.
Behav Neurosci. 2006 Jun;120(3):612-24. doi: 10.1037/0735-7044.120.3.612.
Trace and contextual fear conditioning were evaluated in adult (3-6 months), early middle-aged (8-12 months), late middle-aged (16-20 months), and aged (24-33 months) Sprague-Dawley rats. After trace conditioning, aged animals exhibited significantly less freezing to the tone conditioned stimulus and training context. Levels of trace-cue and context conditioning were negatively correlated with age (r = -0.56 and -0.59, respectively) and positively correlated with each other (r = +0.52). Aged rats showed robust conditioning in short- and long-delay fear paradigms, suggesting that the trace interval, rather than the use of a long interstimulus interval, is responsible for the aging-related deficits in trace fear conditioning. The authors suggest that these aging-related conditioning deficits furnish useful indices of functional changes within hippocampus or perirhinal cortex.
在成年（3 - 6个月）、中年早期（8 - 12个月）、中年晚期（16 - 20个月）和老年（24 - 33个月）的斯普拉格 - 道利大鼠中评估了痕迹性恐惧条件反射和情境性恐惧条件反射。在痕迹性条件反射后，老年动物对条件刺激音和训练情境的僵立反应明显减少。痕迹线索和情境条件反射水平与年龄呈负相关（分别为r = -0.56和 -0.59），且彼此呈正相关（r = +0.52）。老年大鼠在短期和长期延迟恐惧范式中表现出强烈的条件反射，这表明痕迹间隔而非长刺激间隔的使用是导致痕迹性恐惧条件反射中与衰老相关缺陷的原因。作者认为，这些与衰老相关的条件反射缺陷为海马体或鼻周皮质内的功能变化提供了有用指标。
