Fear Conditioning is used to study environment-related conditioned fear in rodents, to access associative learning. It exploits the Pavlovian association between an unpleasant unconditioned stimulus (shock) to a conditioned neutral stimulus (sound cue). Rodents show immobility in fear condition, in which the animal tends to remain stationary in a defensive posture. Antidepressants and anti-central stimulants can significantly reduce the duration of the immobile state.
Fear Conditioning is used to study environment-related conditioned fear in rodents, to access associative learning. Our The contextual and cued fear conditioning test is a gold-standard behavioral paradigm for evaluating associative fear learning and memory in rodents. Our Fear Conditioning System comes with an animal behavior tracking software, controller, HD camera, isolation chamber with speakers, light and fan, dB detector, dual IR/visible light generation, Contextual cage with easy to replace acrylic plates, and smooth shock delivery.
Procedure:
The fear conditioning paradigm utilizes an unconditioned stimulus (US) (e.g., electrical foot shock) paired with a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) (e.g., tone, light, or specific context).
1. Conditioning Phase
Animals are placed in an enclosure and exposed to 1–5 CS-US pairings. For example: A tone (CS) co-occurs with a mild foot shock (US) within a defined context.
2. Memory Retention Test
After a variable interval (typically >24 hours for long-term memory assessment), animals are placed back in the original context where they receive the CS-US exposure during the training session.
If the test animals acquire an association of the US with a context (the box enclosure), they will show freezing responses to the context in the absence of CS co-exposure. Freezing is a species-specific response to fear, which has been defined as complete immobility with the exception of breathing.
Seamless and easy expansion, from 1 to 4 or more units for high throughput.
High-definition video capture and analysis
Accurately detect the freezing state of animals, avoiding false freezing data caused by the slow horizontal movement of the head and the unchanged foot pressure value.
Video, animal condition, score, stimulation state are all displayed simultaneously
Precise and clear visualization.
Multiple stimulation modes
Pure tone, white noise, light, and electrical foot shock.
Interchangeable environmental context plates
Easy to mount on the walls with different patterns for various setups.
Pre-programmed experimental protocols with randomized intervals
Simplify experimental operations
Real-time analysis & preview, with automatic data & video saving.
