Differential acetylcholine release in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus during pavlovian trace and delay conditioning.

Pavlovian trace conditioning critically depends on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and hippocampus (HPC), whereas delay conditioning does not depend on these brain structures. Given that the cholinergic basal forebrain system modulates activity in both the mPFC and HPC, it was reasoned that the level of acetylcholine (ACh) release in these regions would show distinct profiles during testing in trace and delay conditioning paradigms. To test this assumption, microdialysis probes were implanted unilaterally into the mPFC and HPC of rats that were pre-trained in appetitive trace and delay conditioning paradigms using different conditional stimuli in the two tasks.

Association learning-dependent increases in acetylcholine release in the rat auditory cortex during auditory classical conditioning.

The cholinergic system has been implicated in sensory cortical plasticity, learning and memory. This experiment determined the relationship between the acquisition of a Pavlovian conditioned approach response (CR) to an auditory conditioned stimulus (CS) and the release of acetylcholine (ACh) in the primary auditory cortex in rats. Samples of ACh were collected via microdialysis during behavioral training in either an auditory classical conditioning task or in a non-associative control task.