Behavioral expression of learned fear in rats is appropriate to their age at training, not their age at testing.

Abstract

Recent research has shown that learned fear emerges in a response-specific sequence. For example, an odor conditioned stimulus (CS) previously paired with shock elicits behavioral expressions of fear like avoidance at a younger age than it elicits other behavioral expressions of fear like potentiation of the startle response (Richardson, Paxinos, & Lee, 2000). In the present study, the question of whether learned fear is expressed in a manner appropriate to the animal's age at training or its age at testing was explored in three experiments, all using a within-subjects design. The results suggest that learned fear is expressed in a manner appropriate to the rat's age at training, not its age at testing. The Discussion section focuses on the implications of these findings for (1) the developmental analysis of memory and (2) the idea that an aversive CS elicits a central state of fear.