Auditory trace fear conditioning requires perirhinal cortex

The hippocampus is well-known to be critical for trace fear conditioning, but nothing is known about the importance of perirhinal cortex (PR), which has reciprocal connections with hippocampus. PR damage severely impairs delay fear conditioning to ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) and discontinuous tones (pips), but has no effect on delay conditioning to continuous tones. Here we demonstrate that trace auditory fear conditioning also critically depends on PR function. The trace interval between the CS offset and the US onset was 16s. Pre-training neurotoxic lesions were produced through multiple injections of N-methyl-D-aspartate along the full length of PR, which was directly visualized during the injections. Control animals received injections with phosphate-buffered saline. Three-dimensional reconstructions of the lesion volumes demonstrated that the neurotoxic damage was well-localized to PR and included most of its anterior-posterior extent. Automated video analysis quantified freezing behavior, which served as the conditional response. PR-damaged rats were profoundly impaired in trace conditioning to either of three different CSs (a USV, tone pips, and a continuous tone) as well as conditioning to the training context. Within both the lesion and control groups, the type of cue had no effect on the mean CR. The overall PR lesion effect size was 2.7 for cue conditioning and 3.9 for context conditioning. We suggest that the role of PR in trace fear conditioning may be distinct from some of its more perceptual functions. The results further define the essential circuitry underlying trace fear conditioning to auditory cues.