Effects of exercise on Pavlovian fear conditioning. Behav Neurosci 2004 Oct;118(5):1123-7
Date
10/28/2004Pubmed ID
15506895DOI
10.1037/0735-7044.118.5.1123Scopus ID
2-s2.0-5144227245 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 70 CitationsAbstract
Exercise promotes multiple changes in hippocampal morphology and should, as a result, alter behavioral function. The present experiment investigated the effect of exercise on learning using contextual and auditory Pavlovian fear conditioning. Rats remained inactive or voluntarily exercised (VX) for 30 days, after which they received auditory-cued fear conditioning. Twenty-four hours later, rats were tested for learning of the contextual and auditory conditional responses. No differences in freezing behavior to the discrete auditory cue were observed during the training or testing sessions. However, VX rats did freeze significantly more compared to controls when tested in the training context 24 hr after exposure to shock. The enhancement of contextual fear conditioning provides further evidence that exercise alters hippocampal function and learning.
Author List
Baruch DE, Swain RA, Helmstetter FJAuthor
Fred Helmstetter PhD Professor in the Psychology / Neuroscience department at University of Wisconsin - MilwaukeeMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
Acoustic StimulationAnimals
Conditioning, Classical
Fear
Hippocampus
Male
Physical Conditioning, Animal
Rats
Rats, Long-Evans
