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 (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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情境恐惧条件反射的逆行性遗忘症：脾后皮层参与配置处理的证据。

有人提出，情境恐惧条件可以由基本系统（其中环境的个体特征与震惊相关）或配置系统（其中环境特征绑定在一起并与震惊相关）来支持。尽管已知后脾皮质 (RSC) 参与情境恐惧条件反射，但尚不清楚它是否有助于基本系统或配置系统。为了隔离 RSC 在情境恐惧条件反射中的作用，当前的实验检查了 RSC 病变对情境预暴露促进效应的影响，这是一种已知的程序，可以对情境的配置表示产生条件反射。在实验 1 中，预先暴露于条件环境的大鼠与未暴露于条件环境的大鼠相比，冻结得更多，复制上下文暴露前促进效应。尽管 RSC 的训练前病变对上下文暴露前促进效应没有影响（实验 2a），但训练后病变减弱了这种影响（实验 2b），表明 RSC 通常有助于配置上下文表示。讨论了海马后对情境恐惧条件反射的贡献。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。