Pharmacological reminders of emotional state facilitate the retrieval of traces from amnesiac memory.

The experiments reported here show that animals with different levels of acquisition of a conditioned passive avoidance reflex retrieved the reflex differently on systematic testing over a period of 28 days. Animals with the highest and high levels of training reproduced the reflex stably. Animals with an intermediate level of training reproduced the reflex with significant variation. Convulsions induced by pentylenetetrazole (75 and 50 mg/kg. i.p.) resulted in amnesia. The amnestic effect of pentylenetetrazole convulsions depended on the ratio of the intensity of training and the intensity of the induction of convulsions. Reminding, provided by presentation of an unconditioned stimulus, removed the amnestic effect of the convulsive state. Training led to significant decreases in the parameters determining the severity of the convulsive state. The convulsive state was a dissociative state, as subconvulsive doses of pentylenetetrazole (30 mg/kg, i.p.) removed the amnestic effect of convulsive doses. The dissociated state was reproduced by pharmacological reminding of the state of anxiety and fear which was formed during training. A subcataleptic dose of haloperidol (0.25 mg/kg, i.p.) induced a state of fear and removed the amnestic effect of the convulsive state. The same dose of haloperidol improved retrieval of the reflex in animals with low levels of training, i.e., those in which retrieval hardly occurred in normal conditions.