Efeito da valência do estímulo social na persistência da memória contextual

Abstract

The neurobiological bases of contextual memories come from paradigms involving negative stimuli, such as shock. However, memories of the same context can represent positive experiences, not just negative experiences. So, it is necessary to understand how different stimuli with opposite valences work in this paradigm. We used the paradigm adapted from the protocol of aversion or preference conditioning place. TMT and female urine in proestrus, social defeat and interaction with female were used as social stimuli. All are stimuli that are involved with the survival of the animal and are comparable. We also analyzed some behaviors during conditioning, such as freezing in TMT, interaction with female urine, aggressive CD1 chase and female interaction. We observed that olfactory stimuli were able to induce contextual memory that persisted for 7 days after conditioning. TMT was able to induce anxious and fear-like behaviors. Female urine was able to induce further male exploration by this stimulus. However, the polymodal stimuli, social defeat and interaction with the female, were not able to induce the formation of the contextual memory. We did not find relationship between the index of choice of the animals and the behaviors during the conditioning. We can conclude from our results that it is possible to condition the animals and to induce the formation of a contextual memory using stimuli with opposing valences and this memory becomes of long duration.