ArticlePsychopharmacology2015
The effect of repeated exposure to ethanol on pre-existing fear memories in rats.
Article in Psychopharmacology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- MDMA alters fear extinction, and reduces alcohol consumption in inbred alcohol preferring iP rats but not outbred Wistar rats.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Article
- Mechanisms of alcohol influence on fear conditioning: A computational model.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2025Article
- Impairments in expression of devaluation in a Pavlovian goal-tracking task, but not a free operant devaluation task, after fentanyl exposure in female rats.Behavioural brain research · 2024Article
- Hippocampal fear engrams modulate ethanol-induced maladaptive contextual generalization in mice.Hippocampus · 2022Article
- Adolescence alcohol exposure impairs fear extinction and alters medial prefrontal cortex plasticity.Neuropharmacology · 2022Article
- Ethanol modulation of cortico-basolateral amygdala circuits: Neurophysiology and behavior.Neuropharmacology · 2021Review
- Pre-training naltrexone increases conditioned fear learning independent of adolescent alcohol consumption history.Physiology & behavior · 2021Article
- Chronic activation of fear engrams induces extinction-like behavior in ethanol-exposed mice.Hippocampus · 2021Article
- Design and development of a robotic predator as a stimulus in conditioned place aversion for the study of the effect of ethanol and citalopram in zebrafish.Behavioural brain research · 2020Article
- Voluntary alcohol access during adolescence/early adulthood, but not during adulthood, causes faster omission contingency learning.Behavioural brain research · 2019Article
- Chemogenetic stimulation of the infralimbic cortex reverses alcohol-induced fear memory overgeneralization.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Individual differences in voluntary alcohol consumption are associated with conditioned fear in the fear incubation model.Behavioural brain research · 2019Article
- Rodent models of impaired fear extinction.Psychopharmacology · 2019Review
- Rapid reacquisition of contextual fear following extinction in mice: effects of amount of extinction, acute ethanol withdrawal, and ethanol intoxication.Psychopharmacology · 2019Article
- Individual differences in conditioned fear are associated with levels of adolescent/early adult alcohol consumption and instrumental extinction.Behavioural brain research · 2018Article
- Neurobiology of comorbid post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol-use disorder.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2017Review
- Subsecond fear discrimination in rats: adult impairment in adolescent heavy alcohol drinkers.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleThere is a high degree of comorbidity between alcohol use disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but little is known about the interactions of ethanol with traumatic memories.
objectivesUsing auditory fear conditioning in rats, we asked if repeated exposure to ethanol could modify the retrieval of fear memories acquired prior to ethanol exposure.
methodsFollowing auditory fear conditioning, Sprague-Dawley rats were given daily injections of ethanol (1.5 g/kg) or saline over 5 days. Two days later, they were given 20 trials of extinction training and then tested for extinction memory the following day. In a separate experiment, conditioned rats were given repeated ethanol injections and processed for c-Fos immunohistochemistry following a fear retrieval session.
resultsTwo days following the cessation of ethanol, the magnitude of conditioned fear responses (freezing and suppression of bar pressing) was significantly increased. This increase persisted the following day. Waiting 10 days following cessation of ethanol eliminated the effect on fear retrieval. In rats conditioned with low shock levels, repeated exposure to ethanol converted a sub-threshold fear memory into a supra-threshold fear memory. It also increased c-Fos expression in the prelimbic prefrontal cortex, paraventricular thalamus, and the central and basolateral nuclei of the amygdala, areas implicated in the retrieval of fear memories.
conclusionsThese results suggest that repeated exposure to ethanol may exacerbate pre-existing traumatic memories.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.