Hodes Georgia E, Shors Tracey J
Department of Psychology and Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, Rutgers University, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854, United States.
Neurobiol Aging. 2007 Nov;28(11):1783-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2006.07.012. Epub 2006 Sep 12.
Acute stressful experience enhances subsequent learning in males and impairs learning in females. These sex differences emerge soon after puberty in adulthood. Whether these opposite effects of stress on learning extend into older age is unknown. To examine this, young adult (2-3 months) and middle aged (17-18 months) Fischer 344 rats of both sexes were exposed to an acute stressor of brief tailshocks and trained 24 h later with classical eyeblink conditioning using a trace paradigm. Whereas stressful experience enhanced conditioning in adult males and impaired conditioning in adult females, it had no effect whatsoever on conditioning in the aging animals of either sex. There was no effect of aging itself on acquisition of the conditioned response, suggesting that trace conditioning is not necessarily compromised during this period of life. Together, these data indicate that associative learning in the aging animal is resistant to both the negative and positive consequences of stressful experience.
急性应激经历会增强成年雄性大鼠随后的学习能力，而损害成年雌性大鼠的学习能力。这些性别差异在成年期青春期后不久就会出现。压力对学习的这些相反影响是否会延续到老年尚不清楚。为了研究这一点，对年轻成年（2 - 3个月）和中年（17 - 18个月）的两性费希尔344大鼠施加短暂尾部电击的急性应激源，并在24小时后使用痕迹范式通过经典眨眼条件反射进行训练。虽然应激经历增强了成年雄性大鼠的条件反射，损害了成年雌性大鼠的条件反射，但对任何一种性别的老年动物的条件反射都没有任何影响。衰老本身对条件反应的获得没有影响，这表明在生命的这个阶段，痕迹条件反射不一定会受到损害。总之，这些数据表明，衰老动物的联想学习对压力经历的负面和正面后果均具有抗性。
