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The Influence of Social Isolation and Enriched Environment on Fear Conditioning in Rats after Early Proinflammatory Stress

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Abstract

The effect of social isolation or enriched environment on fear conditioning and extinction was studied in 3.5–4-month-old rats exposed to early proinflammatory stress via LPS administration on the 3rd and 5th day after birth. Social isolation reduced the expression of conditioned fear in males and females, as measured by a decrease in time of the freezing response 24 h post conditioning. The greatest sensitivity to social isolation was observed in rats with early proinflammatory stress, for which the freezing time was reduced after exposure to both the cue and the context. We hypothesize that the decrease in fear is associated with a memory deficit. The enriched environment also reduced the freezing time, but to a lesser extent than social isolation, and only the contextual fear response was reduced. The extinction of fear in males of the LPS group was accelerated after exposure to social isolation and enriched environment compared to animals of this group kept in standard conditions. Exposure to early proinflammatory stress resulted in an increased vulnerability of adult animals to changes in housing conditions.

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Funding

This work was carried out within the State assignment of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for 2021–2023 on the topic “Fundamental neurobiological mechanisms of behavior, memory and learning in normal and pathological conditions” (reg. No. AAAAA-A17-117-92040002-6), and with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (projects No. 19-015-00129A and 19-34-90022).

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  1. Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    I. V. Pavlova & N. D. Broshevitskaya

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  1. I. V. Pavlova
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I.V. Pavlova—planning and conducting experiments, data processing, writing and editing the article; N.D. Broshevitskaya—methodology, conducting experiments.

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Correspondence to N. D. Broshevitskaya.

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Russian Text © The Author(s), 2021, published in Zhurnal Evolyutsionnoi Biokhimii i Fiziologii, 2021, Vol. 57, No. 4, pp. 331–343https://doi.org/10.31857/S0044452921040057.

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Pavlova, I.V., Broshevitskaya, N.D. The Influence of Social Isolation and Enriched Environment on Fear Conditioning in Rats after Early Proinflammatory Stress. J Evol Biochem Phys 57, 803–816 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0022093021040062

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