Delayed extinction fails to reduce skin conductance reactivity to fear-conditioned stimuli.

A brief 10-min time delay between an initial and subsequent exposure to extinction trials has been found to impair memory reconsolidation in fear-conditioned rodents and humans, providing a potential means to reduce fearfulness in anxiety disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The present study used videos of biologically prepared, conditioned stimuli (tarantulas) to test the efficacy of delayed extinction in blocking reconsolidation of conditioned fear in healthy young adults. Strong differential conditioning, measured by skin conductance, was observed among a screened subset of participants during acquisition.

Isolation rearing significantly perturbs brain metabolism in the thalamus and hippocampus.

Psychosocial neglect during childhood severely impairs both behavioral and physical health. The isolation rearing model in rodents has been employed by our group and others to study this clinical problem at a basic level. We previously showed that immediate early gene (IEG) expression in the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is decreased in isolation-reared (IR) compared to group-reared (GR) rats.

Environmental enrichment with nesting material accelerates wound healing in isolation-reared rats.

Early enrichment (EE) programs provide a well-established approach to mitigate the deleterious effects of childhood adversity. To better understand the therapeutic features of EE, in the current study we compared the effect of two forms of nesting material on isolation reared (IR) rats. We found that both materials, absent of social and any other physical enrichment, significantly improved wound healing rates.

Nest making and oxytocin comparably promote wound healing in isolation reared rats.

Background: Environmental enrichment (EE) fosters attachment behavior through its effect on brain oxytocin levels in the hippocampus and other brain regions, which in turn modulate the hypothalamic-pituitary axis (HPA). Social isolation and other stressors negatively impact physical healing through their effect on the HPA. Therefore, we reasoned that: 1) provision of a rat EE (nest building with Nestlets) would improve wound healing in rats undergoing stress due to isolation rearing and 2) that oxytocin would have a similar beneficial effect on wound healing.