The Medial Prefrontal Cortex, Nucleus Accumbens, Basolateral Amygdala, and Hippocampus Regulate the Amelioration of Environmental Enrichment and Cue in Fear Behavior in the Animal Model of PTSD

Figure 1

Overview of the experimental procedures. The behavioral processes were shown in the adaptation, EE phase, footshock treatment, and situational reminder phases. On days 0-17, the mice in the EE groups were subjected to the EE procedure. These mice received the EE procedure at the end of the experiment. However, the mice in the no EE groups were housed in the standard cage. On day 17, all mice were placed in the footshock box for 2 min, and then the mice were subjected to the footshock treatment (2 mA, 10 seconds). On days 18-20, all mice have given a situational reminder procedure that the mice were placed in the footshock box for 2 min with the cue ball but not any footshock. One hundred twenty minutes after the last behavioral test, the immunohistochemical staining with the c-Fos protein expression on day 20. All mice were assigned to the no EE/no cue, no EE/cue, EE/no cue, and EE/cue groups (, per group). EE: environmental enrichment.