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Updated: Aug 15, 2026

Whisker-signaled Eyeblink Classical Conditioning in Head-fixed Mice
Published on: March 30, 2016
Cortical involvement in acquisition and extinction of trace eyeblink conditioning
A P Weible1, M D McEchron, J F Disterhoft
1Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Northwestern University Institute for Neuroscience, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA. a-weible@northwestern.edu
Abstract:
Previous studies have implicated 2 cortical regions interconnected with the hippocampal formation, the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), as loci important for the acquisition of hippocampally dependent trace eyeblink conditioning. These loci have also been proposed to serve as long-term storage sites of task critical information. This study used lesions made prior to training to investigate the roles of the RSC, as well as the caudal and rostral subdivisions of the mPFC, in the acquisition and subsequent extinction of trace eyeblink conditioning in the rabbit. The caudal mPFC and rostral mPFC were shown to be critical for acquisition and extinction of the conditioned reflex, respectively. The data indicate that the RSC is not critical for acquisition or extinction of the trace conditioned reflex.
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