Recovery of fear memories in rats: role of gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) in infantile amnesia.

Infantile amnesia is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but its neural bases remain largely unknown. The authors identify a role for GABAergic transmission in suppressing retrieval of memories acquired in infancy. Eighteen-day-old rats received pairings of white noise and shock; considerable forgetting of this experience (assessed by freezing) occurred after 10 days. The memory was recovered by pretest administration of the GABAA inverse agonist FG7142 10 days, but not 2 months, after training. This effect of FG7142 generalized when a passive avoidance procedure was used. Also, FG7142 decreased fear of a latently inhibited conditioned stimulus, showing that the observed memory recovery effect was not due to a state-dependent process. It appears that GABA may be involved in infantile amnesia regardless of the emotional content of the memory.