Impaired trace fear conditioning and diminished ERK1/2 phosphorylation in the dorsal hippocampus of adult rats administered alcohol as neonates.

Utilizing a rat model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), ethanol was administered over postnatal days (PD) 4 to 9. As adults, control and ethanol rats underwent trace fear conditioning (TFC), in which a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and footshock unconditioned stimulus (US) were repeatedly paired, though the two stimuli never overlapped in time. Following training in Experiment 1, conditioned fear (freezing) to the tone CS was dose-dependently reduced in ethanol rats relative to controls. Experiment 2 was designed to test whether the TFC deficit varied based on the duration of the trace interval (TI; time from CS offset to US onset). Holding the time separating CS onset from US onset constant at 20 sec, control and ethanol rats were trained with a 5 or 15 sec tone CS, followed 15 or 5 sec later, respectively, by the US. Conditioned fear to the tone CS was significantly reduced in high dose ethanol rats trained with the 15 sec TI only. Acquisition and consolidation of trace fear memories relies on forebrain N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) signaling, including the downstream phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (pERK1/2). Separate rats were trained with the 5 or 15 sec TI and then sacrificed 1 hr later. Significant reductions in pERK1/2-positive neurons were seen in areas CA1 and CA3 of the dorsal hippocampus (DH) following training at both TIs in ethanol rats. The disruption of DH learning-dependent plasticity appears tied to freezing behavior in ethanol rats, but only when the training stimuli are separated by more than 5 sec.