Department of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles, California, 90095, USA.
Sci Rep. 2017 May 24;7(1):2333. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-02542-1.
Learning about context is essential for appropriate behavioral strategies, but important contingencies may not arise during initial learning. A variant of contextual fear conditioning, context pre-exposure facilitation, allows us to directly test the relationship between novelty-induced acetylcholine release and later contextual associability. We demonstrate that optogenetically-enhanced acetylcholine during initial contextual exploration leads to stronger fear after subsequent pairing with shock, suggesting that novelty-induced acetylcholine release primes future contextual associations.
了解背景对于适当的行为策略至关重要，但在初始学习期间，重要的条件可能不会出现。一种情境恐惧条件反射的变体，即情境预暴露促进，使我们能够直接测试新奇诱导的乙酰胆碱释放与随后的情境关联性之间的关系。我们证明，在初始情境探索期间光遗传学增强的乙酰胆碱会导致随后与电击配对后更强的恐惧，表明新奇诱导的乙酰胆碱释放为未来的情境关联做好准备。
