FEAR MEMORY RECALL INCREASES ANXIETY-LIKE RESPONSE AND ALCOHOL INTAKE IN ETHANOL DEPENDENT RATS: REVERSION BY RECONSOLIDATION INTERFERENCE

Encuentro; VIII LASBRA INTERNATIONAL MEETING: Neurobiological basis of alcoholism: from molecules to behavior?; 2017

Withdrawal from chronic ethanol facilitates the formation of contextual fear memory with its retrieval promoting an increase in anxiety-like state and ethanol consumption. Considering that a fear memory can be attenuated by the interference with reconsolidation, we examined if these effects of fear recall in ethanol withdrawn rats (ETOH) can be reversed by reconsolidation disruption. Male Wistar rats made dependent via an ETOH containing liquid diet (6% v/v) for 14 days. Contextual fear conditioning was performed on day 3 of withdrawal. To interfere with reconsolidation process rats received d-cycloserine (DCS, 5 mg/kg, ip) 30 min before memory retrieval and then were injected with propranolol (PROP,10 mg/Kg, ip). Rats treated with saline (SAL) after retrieval and non-ethanol dependent animals were also evaluated. The beer (ethanol, 6%v/v) intake and performance in the elevated plus maze (EPM) were examined 30 min after recall of a memory interfered or not. ETOH animals treated with DCS/SAL showed a significant decrease in the percentage of time spent on the open arms and in the number of open arm entries in the EPM, and also exhibited elevated alcohol intake following fear memory retrieval. However, ETOH rats treated with DCS/PROP displayed beer consumption and EPM performance similar to control groups. Our results suggest that reconsolidation disruption prevents the increase in the anxiety-like response and alcohol intake promoted by fear memory recall in ETOH rats. Hence, fear memory reconsolidation interference acquires relevance in the context of alcoholism.