It has been suggested that contextual fear conditioning can be supported by either an elemental system, where individual features of the environment are associated with shock, or a configural system, where environmental features are bound together and associated with shock. Although the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) is known to be involved in contextual fear conditioning, it is not clear whether it contributes to the elemental or configural system. To isolate the role of the RSC in contextual fear conditioning, the current experiments examined the influence of RSC lesions on the context preexposure facilitation effect, a procedure known to produce conditioning to a configural representation of context. In Experiment 1, rats that were preexposed to the conditioning context froze more compared to rats that were not, replicating the context preexposure facilitation effect. Although pretraining lesions of the RSC had no impact on the context preexposure facilitation effect (Experiment 2a), posttraining lesions attenuated the effect (Experiment 2b), suggesting that the RSC normally contributes to a configural context representation. Retrohippocampal contributions to contextual fear conditioning are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

中文翻译：

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逆向失忆的情境恐惧条件：脾后皮质参与构型处理的证据。

有人提出情境恐惧条件可以由环境的各个特征与冲击相关的基本系统或环境特征与冲击结合在一起的结构系统来支持。尽管已知脾后皮质（RSC）参与情境恐惧调节，但尚不清楚其是否有助于基本或构型系统。为了隔离RSC在情境恐惧调节中的作用，当前的实验检查了RSC病变对情境预暴露促进作用的影响，该过程已知会对情境的结构化表示产生条件。在实验1中，预先暴露在条件环境中的大鼠比未暴露在条件中的大鼠冻结更多，复制上下文接触前的促进作用。尽管RSC的训练前病变对情境暴露前促进效果没有影响（实验2a），但训练后病变却减弱了这种影响（实验2b），这表明RSC通常有助于结构性情境表征。讨论了后海马对情境恐惧的调节作用。（PsycINFO数据库记录