Retrieval and Savings of Contextual Fear Memories Across an Extended Retention Interval in Juvenile and Adult Male and Female Rats

Adult rodents exhibit an exceptional ability to retrieve context fear memories across lengthy retention intervals. In contrast, these memories established in younger rodents are susceptible to significant forgetting. The present study aimed to examine the persistence of contextual fear memories established in juvenile and adult Long-Evans male and female rats. Testing 1-day after conditioning, adult males exhibited evidence for greater conditioning than juvenile males, while in females, conditioning did not differ between juvenile and adult rats. In adults, males displayed greater conditioning than females, while in juveniles, males and females reached similar conditioning levels. At the 60-day retention interval, adult sex differences were maintained; however, juvenile rats failed to retrieve this remote contextual fear memory. Next, we examined whether a savings test procedure could recover these remotely established juvenile memories. Following a 60-day retention test, the now adult rats were presented with an additional context-shock pairing to assess the level of savings. While this procedure produced greater conditioning in males than females, the relative savings of this early life memory were similar in males and females. The results of these experiments indicate that adult sex differences in contextual fear memory are maintained across an extended retention interval, while in juveniles, there were no significant sex differences. A novel finding in the present study was that both male and female rats failed to retrieve an initial juvenile memory following an extended retention interval. However, these memories were recovered with a single reminder of the original juvenile experience.

Automated summary

Adult rodents have a strong ability to retrieve context fear memories across long retention intervals, but younger rodents are more prone to forgetting. In this study, conditioning was stronger in adult male rats compared to juvenile males, while there was no difference between juvenile and adult females. Adult males showed greater conditioning than females, but both juvenile males and females reached similar conditioning levels. At the 60-day retention interval, adult sex differences remained, but juvenile rats failed to retrieve the remote contextual fear memory. However, a savings test procedure successfully recovered these memories in both males and females.