Opportunities to Discuss Diversity-Related Topics in Neuroscience Courses.

Diversity is a foundational topic in psychology, and APA recommends that diversity is covered across the psychology curriculum. Neuroscience courses face challenges with incorporating diversity-related topics owing to the historical lack of neuroscience research that focuses on diversity and the restricted range of diversity-related topics that neuroscience is typically associated with (i.e.

Impairment of the context preexposure facilitation effect in juvenile rats by neonatal alcohol exposure is associated with decreased Egr-1 mRNA expression in the prefrontal cortex.

The context preexposure facilitation effect (CPFE) is a variant of contextual fear conditioning in which learning about the context (preexposure) and associating the context with a shock (training) occur on separate occasions. The CPFE is sensitive to a range of neonatal alcohol doses (Murawski & Stanton, 2011). The current study examined the impact of neonatal alcohol on Egr-1 mRNA expression in the infralimbic (IL) and prelimbic (PL) subregions of the mPFC, the CA1 of dorsal hippocampus (dHPC), and the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA), following the preexposure and training phases of the CPFE.

Inhibiting corticosterone synthesis during fear memory formation exacerbates cued fear extinction memory deficits within the single prolonged stress model.

Using the single prolonged stress (SPS) animal model of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), previous studies suggest that enhanced glucocorticoid receptor (GR) expression leads to cued fear extinction retention deficits. However, it is unknown how the endogenous ligand of GRs, corticosterone (CORT), may contribute to extinction retention deficits in the SPS model. Given that CORT synthesis during fear learning is critical for fear memory consolidation and SPS enhances GR expression, CORT synthesis during fear memory formation could strengthen fear memory in SPS rats by enhancing GR activation during fear learning.

Sex differences in the single prolonged stress model.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating anxiety disorder resulting from traumatic stress exposure. Females are more likely to develop PTSD than males, but neurobiological mechanisms underlying female susceptibility are lacking. This can be addressed by using nonhuman animal models.

Egr-1 increases in the prefrontal cortex following training in the context preexposure facilitation effect (CPFE) paradigm.

The context pre-exposure facilitation effect (CPFE) is a modified form of standard contextual fear conditioning that dissociates learning about the context during a preexposure phase from learning the context-shock association during an immediate shock training phase conducted on separate days. Fear conditioning in the CPFE is an associative process in which only animals that are preexposed to the same context they are later given an immediate shock in demonstrate freezing when tested for conditioned fear memory. Previous research has shown that the hippocampus and amygdala are necessary for different phases of the CPFE, but whether other brain regions are also involved is unknown.

Deficits in trace fear conditioning induced by neonatal alcohol persist into adulthood in female rats.

The developing hippocampus is particularly vulnerable to the toxic effects of alcohol, and behavioral deficits on hippocampus-dependent tasks have been reported following neonatal alcohol exposure in rodents. Previously, we have found that trace fear conditioning (a hippocampus-dependent learning task) is disrupted in rats exposed to alcohol during postnatal days (PD) 4-9, although delay fear conditioning is not. The present study indicates that this impairment in trace fear conditioning, previously only measured during adolescence, persists into adulthood but only in females.