Figure 1
From: Hunger Promotes Fear Extinction by Activation of an Amygdala Microcircuit
Acute short-term fasting before fear conditioning inhibits formation of context- and conditioned stimulus (CS)-induced long-term fear memory (LTM) while not affecting short-term memory (STM). (a) Fasting started 16 h before and continued during fear acquisition. All mice had access to food ad libitum after fear acquisition and before and during fear testing. (b) Both fasted and fed mice exhibited similar baseline freezing and acquisition of conditioned fear. (c) Reduced context freezing of mice that were fasted before and during fear acquisition. (d) Mice that were fasted before and during fear acquisition displayed reduced CS-induced freezing 48 h after fear conditioning, whereas STM tested 30 and 150 min after fear acquisition was similar to controls (repeated two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for acquisition, Student’s t-test for context and CS testing, **P<0.01; LTM—food, n=11, fasting: n=11; STM 30 min—food: n=6, fasting: n=6; STM 150 min: food: n=6, fasting: n=6).
