Modified Fear Conditioning for Inducing Flight Behaviors in Mice
Summary
To study flight behaviors in a fearful context, we introduce a modified fear conditioning protocol. This protocol ensures that mice consistently exhibit flight behaviors during cue presentation in the fear conditioning.
Abstract
The appropriate manifestation of defensive behavior in a threatening situation is critical for survival. The prevailing theory suggests that an active defensive behavior, such as jumping or rapid darting, is expressed under high threat imminence or actual threat, whereas passive defensive behavior, such as freezing, is expressed when the threat is predicted, but the threat imminence is relatively low. In classical fear conditioning, subjects typically exhibit freezing as a conditioned defensive response, with little expression of active defensive behavior in most cases. Here, we introduce a modified fear conditioning procedure for mice to observe the transition from freezing to flight and vice versa, involving five repetitive pairings of conditioned stimuli (CS; continuous tone, 8 kHz, 95 dB SPL (sound pressure levels)) and unconditioned stimuli (US; foot shock, 0.9 mA, 1.0 s) over two days. This modified fear conditioning procedure requires a relatively large number of conditioning sessions and conditioning days but does not necessitate a high-intensity foot shock for modest expression of flight behavior. Using the same context for conditioning and salient CS presentations is essential to elicit flight behaviors. This modified fear conditioning procedure is a reliable method for observing active defensive behaviors in mice, providing an opportunity to elucidate the fine mechanisms and characteristics of such behaviors in a fearful context.
Introduction
The appropriate selection of defensive behaviors under threatening circumstances is crucial for the survival of all animals. Defensive behaviors gradually shift from one to another based on threat proximity, such as the transition between freezing and flight behaviors1,2,3. Dysregulation of these behaviors is often observed in various mental disorders4. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one such disorder characterized by exaggerated defensive behaviors, like panic responses to non-threatening stimuli4.
Classical fear conditioning in rodents is commonly used as a model for PTSD5,6,7, but rodents do not express flight (panic-like) behaviors in this model8. Consequently, the classical fear conditioning model, often referred to as the 'rodent PTSD model,' lacks face validity for PTSD in humans, particularly in capturing flight or panic-like symptoms, which have not been well-studied.
Recently, several modified fear conditioning protocols have successfully demonstrated that rodent subjects exhibit flight behavior during these procedures. For instance, repetitive associations of a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US) seven times in a day allowed female rats to exhibit darting behaviors similar to flight behaviors9. In two-day fear conditionings using serial compound stimuli (SCS; composed of tone followed by noise), mice began showing flight behaviors during the noise part of SCS presentations10,11,12. The detailed description of the SCS method is provided in a protocol report13. A three-day fear conditioning with SCS also worked for rats to induce flight behaviors14. However, these new protocols have some limitations. For example, the use of serial cue presentation does not allow for the exclusion of the influence of proximity estimation on defensive behavior. In the case of seven times association of CS-US in rats, the majority of flight responses were observed in females rather than males.
In light of these considerations, we introduce a modified fear conditioning protocol for mice to investigate flight behaviors in a fearful context. Male mice consistently exhibit flight behavior during our modified fear conditioning. In this protocol, the salient tone is used as the CS instead of SCS. Additionally, a minimum of five pairings of CS-US in a day for at least two days, along with fear potentiation by the conditioned context, is required. The protocol provides another option for investigating flight behaviors, complementing previous protocols, depending on the research purpose.
Protocol
Representative Results
Discussion
The modified fear conditioning protocol introduced in this article is a stable method for investigating flight behaviors in a fearful context. By employing this protocol, we have found that the flight behaviors of mice in the fearful context are triggered by salient stimuli and depend on the context. The characteristics of flight behavior were not well-investigated, as there was no suitable protocol to observe flight behaviors. This protocol will be one of the suitable methods for studying active defensive behaviors in a…
Declarações
The authors have nothing to disclose.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported partly by KAKENHI Grants JP22K15795 (to T.F.), JP22K09734 (to N.K.), JP21K07489 (to R.Y.), Kanazawa Medical University (C2022-3, D2021-4, to R.Y.) and The Naito Foundation (to T.F.).
Materials
| Audio speaker | Fostex | FT17H | |
| Amplifier | Sony | TA-F500 | |
| CMOS camera | Sanwa Supply Inc. | CMS-V43BK | |
| Fear conditioning chamber | Panlab S.L.U. | LE116 | |
| Food pellets | Nosan | Labo MR standard | |
| LED | Yamazen | LT-B05N | |
| Microphone | ACO | type 4156N | |
| Scramble shocker | Panlab S.L.U. | LE 100-26 | |
| Sound card | Behringer | UMC202 | |
| Sound software | Syntrillium Software | Cool Edit 2000 | |
| Transducer | Panlab S.L.U. | LE 111 |
Referências
- Fanselow, M. S., Lester, L. S. . Evolution and learning. , 185-212 (1988).
- Fanselow, M. S. Neural organization of the defensive behavior system responsible for fear. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 1 (4), 429-438 (1994).
- Mobbs, D., Headley, D. B., Ding, W., Dayan, P. Space, time, and fear: Survival computations along defensive circuits. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 24 (3), 228-241 (2020).
- Black, D. W., Grant, J. E. Dsm-5 guidebook: The essential companion to the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. American Psychiatric Pub. , (2014).
- Bienvenu, T. C., et al. The advent of fear conditioning as an animal model of post-traumatic stress disorder: Learning from the past to shape the future of ptsd research. Neuron. 109 (15), 2380-2397 (2021).
- Johnson, L. R., Mcguire, J., Lazarus, R., Palmer, A. A. Pavlovian fear memory circuits and phenotype models of ptsd. Neuropharmacology. 62 (2), 638-646 (2012).
- Yehuda, R., Ledoux, J. Response variation following trauma: A translational neuroscience approach to understanding ptsd. Neuron. 56 (1), 19-32 (2007).
- Ledoux, J. E. Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience. 23 (1), 155-184 (2000).
- Gruene, T. M., Flick, K., Stefano, A., Shea, S. D., Shansky, R. M. Sexually divergent expression of active and passive conditioned fear responses in rats. Elife. 4, e11352 (2015).
- Fadok, J. P., et al. A competitive inhibitory circuit for selection of active and passive fear responses. Nature. 542 (7639), 96-100 (2017).
- Hersman, S., Allen, D., Hashimoto, M., Brito, S. I., Anthony, T. E. Stimulus salience determines defensive behaviors elicited by aversively conditioned serial compound auditory stimuli. Elife. 9, e53803 (2020).
- Trott, J. M., Hoffman, A. N., Zhuravka, I., Fanselow, M. S. Conditional and unconditional components of aversively motivated freezing, flight and darting in mice. Elife. 11, e75663 (2022).
- Borkar, C. D., Fadok, J. P. A novel pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm to study freezing and flight behavior. Journal of Visualized Experiments. 167, e61536 (2021).
- Totty, M. S., et al. Behavioral and brain mechanisms mediating conditioned flight behavior in rats. Scientific Reports. 11 (1), 8215 (2021).
- Furuyama, T., et al. Multiple factors contribute to flight behaviors during fear conditioning. Scientific Reports. 13 (1), 10402 (2023).
- Cain, C. K. Avoidance problems reconsidered. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 26, 9-17 (2019).
- Ledoux, J. E., Moscarello, J., Sears, R., Campese, V. The birth, death and resurrection of avoidance: A reconceptualization of a troubled paradigm. Molecular Psychiatry. 22 (1), 24-36 (2017).
- Bouchekioua, Y., et al. Serotonin 5-ht2c receptor knockout in mice attenuates fear responses in contextual or cued but not compound context-cue fear conditioning. Translational Psychiatry. 12 (1), 58 (2022).
- Bouchekioua, Y., Nishitani, N., Ohmura, Y. Conditioned lick suppression: Assessing contextual, cued, and context-cue compound fear responses independently of locomotor activity in mice. Bio-Protocol. 12 (23), e4568 (2022).
