Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 4, 2025
Ex Vivo Optogenetic Dissection of Fear Circuits in Brain Slices
Published on: April 5, 2016
Electrical lesion of bilateral ventrolateral orbital cortex impairs fear- and space-related learning and affects
Zheng Chu1,2, Peng Liu3, Gang Lei1
1College of Medicine and Forensics, Xi'an Jiaotong University Health Science Center, Xi'an, P.R. China.
Objectives:
Although many studies have indicated that orbitofrontal cortex plays an important role in the learning and retrieval of memory and subsequent decision-making, the role of ventrolateral orbital cortex (VLO) still remains unclear, especially related to fear and space.
Methods:
Four separate cohorts of rats were used in this study. After sham surgery and electrical lesion of bilateral VLO, four cohorts received active avoidance test, passive avoidance test, Morris water maze and T maze separately.
Results:
Firstly, data shown that electrolytic lesions of bilateral VLO of Sprague-Dawley rats shortened the latency of rats to escape to darkroom in passive avoidance test. Besides, the damage of VLO also resulted in decrease of the number of active avoidance of rats from the third day during 5 consecutive days' training in active avoidance test. What's more, the impairment of VLO significantly shortened the exploring time in the target quadrant of rats in Morris water maze. Furthermore, VLO-lesions group shown lower correct alternation percentage than sham group in T maze.
Conclusions:
These results indicated that not only in the learning and retrieval of fear-related memory, VLO also plays an important role in the learning and retrieval of spatial-related memory guided by visual cues.
