ArticleFrontiers in global women's health2021
Maternal Experience Does Not Predict Fear Extinction and Anxiety-Like Behaviour in Primiparous Rats Post-weaning.
Article in Frontiers in global women's health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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3 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Estrous Cycle Impacts Fear Extinction and Relapse in Female Adolescent Rats.Developmental psychobiology · 2025Article
- Reproductive experience alters the effects of diazepam and fluoxetine on anxiety-like behaviour, fear extinction, and corticosterone levels in female rats.Psychopharmacology · 2023Article
- The impact of the ovarian cycle on anxiety, allopregnanolone, and corticotropin releasing hormone changes after motherhood in female rats and women.Translational psychiatry · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Reproductive experience leads to long-lasting changes in anxiety-like behaviour and fear extinction, the laboratory model of exposure therapy for anxiety disorders. For example, fear extinction is influenced by estrous cycle in nulliparous (no reproductive experience) female rats, but this effect is abolished in primiparous (one reproductive experience) females. It is unclear whether such changes are driven by pregnancy, maternal experience of caring for offspring during the postpartum period, or a combination of both experiences. The present study sought to determine the influence of maternal experience (i.e., exposure to pups and mother-pup interactions) on fear extinction in primiparous rats. In Experiment 1, we tested whether pup exposure is necessary to mitigate estrous effects on fear extinction in primiparous rats. Age-matched nulliparous rats, primiparous rats, and primiparous rats who experienced pregnancy but not pup exposure, underwent fear conditioning on day 1 (2 months post-parturition), extinction training during proestrus (high sex hormones) or metestrus (low sex hormones) on day 2, and extinction recall on day 3. Replicating past research, nulliparous rats showed impaired extinction recall when they were extinguished during metestrus compared to proestrus. In contrast, primiparous rats with and without pup exposure showed comparable extinction recall irrespective of estrous phase. In Experiment 2, we assessed whether naturally-occurring variation in mother-pup interactions predict future fear extinction performance and anxiety-like behaviour. During the first week of lactation, primiparous rats were measured for maternal behaviours toward pups. Primiparous rats were then tested on the light-dark box and elevated plus maze to measure anxiety-like behaviour and underwent a fear extinction protocol 1 month post-weaning. We found no significant correlations between maternal behaviour and fear extinction outcomes or anxiety-like behaviour. Our findings suggest that pregnancy, not maternal experience, mitigates the impact of estrous cycle on fear extinction. In addition, natural variation in maternal experience does not appear to contribute to variability in future fear extinction outcomes or anxiety-like behaviour in primiparous rats.
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