Fear Incubation Using an Extended Fear-Conditioning Protocol for RatsCésar Acevedo-Triana 1,6, Javier L. Rico 2, Leonardo A. Ortega 2, Melissa Andrea N. Cardenas 3, Fernando P. Cardenas 3, Manuel J. Rojas 4, Juan Carlos Forigua-Vargas 2, Julián Cifuentes 2, Camilo Hurtado-Parrado 2,5
1School of Psychology, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, 2Animal Behavior Laboratory, Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz, 3Department of Psychology, Universidad de Los Andes, 4School of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Health Department, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 5Department of Psychology, Troy University, 6Department of Neurobiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
We describe an extended fear-conditioning protocol that produces overtraining and fear incubation in rats. This protocol entails a single training session with 25 tone-shock pairings (i.e., overtraining) and a comparison of conditioned freezing responses during context and cue tests 48 h (short-term) and 6 weeks (long-term) after training.
