Institute of Physiology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia.
Second Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czechia.
PLoS One. 2023 Jun 22;18(6):e0274437. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274437. eCollection 2023.
We designed a behavioral task called One-Trial Trace Escape Reaction (OTTER), in which rats incidentally associate two temporally discontinuous stimuli: a neutral acoustic cue (CS) with an aversive stimulus (US) which occurs two seconds later (CS-2s-US sequence). Rats are first habituated to two similar environmental contexts (A and B), each consisting of an interconnected dark and light chamber. Next, rats experience the CS-2s-US sequence in the dark chamber of one of the contexts (either A or B); the US is terminated immediately after a rat escapes into the light chamber. The CS-2s-US sequence is presented only once to ensure the incidental acquisition of the association. The recall is tested 24 h later when rats are presented with only the CS in the alternate context (B or A), and their behavioral response is observed. Our results show that 59% of the rats responded to the CS by escaping to the light chamber, although they experienced only one CS-2s-US pairing. The OTTER task offers a flexible high throughput tool to study memory acquired incidentally after a single experience. Incidental one-trial acquisition of association between temporally discontinuous events may be one of the essential components of episodic memory formation.
我们设计了一个名为单次痕迹逃避反应（OTTER）的行为任务，在该任务中，大鼠偶然地将两个时间上不连续的刺激联系起来：一个中性的声音线索（CS）与两秒钟后发生的厌恶刺激（US）（CS-2s-US 序列）。大鼠首先适应两个相似的环境环境（A 和 B），每个环境都由一个相互连接的暗室和亮室组成。接下来，大鼠在一个环境的暗室中经历 CS-2s-US 序列（A 或 B）；US 在大鼠逃入亮室后立即终止。CS-2s-US 序列仅呈现一次，以确保关联的偶然获得。24 小时后，当大鼠只在另一个环境（B 或 A）中呈现 CS 时，会进行回忆测试，并观察它们的行为反应。我们的结果表明，尽管大鼠只经历了一次 CS-2s-US 配对，但有 59%的大鼠通过逃到亮室对 CS 做出反应。OTTER 任务提供了一种灵活的高通量工具，可用于研究单次经验后偶然获得的记忆。时间上不连续事件之间的偶然单次获得关联可能是情景记忆形成的基本组成部分之一。
