Fear conditioning and latent inhibition in mice lacking the high affinity subclass of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain

Nicotine can enhance performance in several tests of cognition but the specific nicotinic receptor subtypes mediating these effects are largely unknown. Knock out mice lacking the β2 subunit of the nicotinic receptor were evaluated in fear conditioning and latent inhibition tasks to begin to determi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuropharmacology 2000-10, Vol.39 (13), p.2779-2784
Main Authors: Caldarone, Barbara J, Duman, Catharine H, Picciotto, Marina R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aging
Aging - psychology
Animal
Animals
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Cell receptors
Cell structures and functions
Conditioning, Operant - physiology
Fear - physiology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Knockout mice
Learning
Learning. Memory
Male
Memory
Mice
Mice, Knockout
Miscellaneous
Molecular and cellular biology
Monoamines receptors (catecholamine, serotonine, histamine, acetylcholine)
Nicotine - pharmacology
Nicotinic Agonists - pharmacology
Nicotinic receptors
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Receptors, Nicotinic - drug effects
Receptors, Nicotinic - genetics
Receptors, Nicotinic - metabolism
Receptors, Nicotinic - physiology
Reflex, Startle - physiology
Sex Characteristics
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Nicotine can enhance performance in several tests of cognition but the specific nicotinic receptor subtypes mediating these effects are largely unknown. Knock out mice lacking the β2 subunit of the nicotinic receptor were evaluated in fear conditioning and latent inhibition tasks to begin to determine which receptor subtypes mediate the cognitive effects of nicotine. Young (2–4 months) knock out and wild type mice did not differ in either contextual or tone-conditioned fear, but aged (9–20 months) knock out males were impaired in freezing to both context and tone compared to aged wild type males. No differences in fear conditioning were observed between aged knock out and wild type females. Latent inhibition of fear to a pre-exposed tone, as measured by behavioral freezing, was also assessed. Both knock out and wild type mice displayed similar levels of latent inhibition, although overall levels of freezing were lower in knock out mice. These results support a previous study showing spatial learning deficits in aged β2 subunit knock out mice [EMBO J. 18 (1999) 1235] and suggest that performance of other cognitive tasks may not be influenced by absence of β2 subunit-containing receptors.
ISSN:0028-3908
1873-7064
DOI:10.1016/S0028-3908(00)00137-4