Abstract
Mice were trained to avoid one compartment of a shuttlebox using the procedures of Pavlovian fear conditioning, and retention was measured 1 day later and 1 month later using an active avoidance test. Good retention was evident at 1 day, but substantial forgetting occurred after 1 month, performance levels in this group being equivalent to those exhibited by sham-conditioned animals. Treatment with d-amphetamine (2.0 mg/kg) before testing restored retention to levels shown by mice tested 1 day after conditioning. When retention was tested with a passive avoidance test, amphetamine increased rather than decreased latencies of animals tested 1 month after conditioning. Amphetamine did not decrease latencies of sham-conditioned mice tested in active avoidance and did not enhance the performance of those with strong memory tested 1 day following training in either active or passive tests. Amphetamine also enhanced retrieval in mice in which conditioning was weakened by a reduction in shock level rather than by imposition of a long retention interval. These findings add to the growing evidence that retention of weak memories can be facilitated by monoaminergic stimulation of retrieval mechanisms.
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This work was supported by NIMH Grant 37326 to D.Q. The authors wish to thank Brian Barnett, Evelyn Lee, and Masaru Horiuchi for technical assistance and Anne Turanick for typing the manuscript. bs]Reference Note
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Quartermain, D., Judge, M.E. & Judge, M. Retrieval enhancement in mice by pretest amphetamine injection after a long retention interval. Psychobiology 11, 166–172 (1983). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03326789
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03326789