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Apelin-13 Impaires Acquisition but Not Consolidation or Expression of Contextual Fear in Rats

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Abstract

Apelin-13, as an endogenous neuropeptide, is the ligand for the G-protein-coupled receptor, APJ, which has recently been demonstrated to be involved in the process that contributes to learning and memory. Previous studies showed that apelin may be required for certain forms of learning and memory. Up to date, the role of apelin in fear memory has not been explored. In the present study, we tested the effects of apelin-13 (1.0, 2.0 and 4.0 µg/rat) on contextual fear conditioning (experiment 1), consolidation (experiment 2) and expression (experiment 3) in rats. A well established fear conditioning protocol was used, which contained three training phases: habituation, fear conditioning and test. Apelin-13 was i.c.v injected 10 min before conditioning (experiment 1), immediately after conditioning (experiment 2) or 10 min before testing (experiment 3). The values of percent freezing were used to measure fear. We found that only 2.0 µg apelin-13 administrations produced a decrease freezing in experiment 1. The most effective dose of apelin-13 (2.0 µg) was selected, but it had no effect on freezing in experiment 2 and 3. Furthermore, the decreased freezing in experiment 1 was not attributed to the deficits of locomotor activity and foot-shock sensitivity. These results, for the first time, indicated that apelin-13 impaired fear acquisition but not fear consolidation or expression.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by A Project Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81171281), A Project supported by Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (14C0128).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology, School of Basic Medical Science, Central South University, Changsha, 410007, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Li Han, Huaiqing Luo & Xiaoqun Qin

  2. Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, Changsha Medical University, Changsha, 410219, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Huaiqing Luo

  3. Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, 410013, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Fulian Huang

  4. Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, University of South China, Hengyang, 421001, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Shaowen Tian

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  1. Li Han
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Correspondence to Shaowen Tian or Xiaoqun Qin.

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Han, L., Luo, H., Huang, F. et al. Apelin-13 Impaires Acquisition but Not Consolidation or Expression of Contextual Fear in Rats. Neurochem Res 41, 2345–2351 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11064-016-1948-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11064-016-1948-3

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