Immediate post-reminder injection of gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) agonist midazolam attenuates reactivation of forgotten fear in the infant rat.

J. H. Kim, G. McNally, and R. Richardson (2006) reported that pretest injection of FG7142, a GABA inverse agonist, alleviated infantile amnesia in rats. From this, it was concluded that GABAergic neurotransmission is involved in the forgetting seen in the developing rat. The present study extends that finding by examining the role of GABA in the reactivation of a forgotten memory in the infant rat. Sixteen-day-old rats were conditioned to fear a white noise. When tested 3 days later, rats that had not received a reminder treatment exhibited substantial forgetting. Reactivation of memory (as assessed by high levels of freezing) was observed in rats that were given a reminder shock and injected with saline the day before test. However, rats given a reminder shock and injected with midazolam immediately afterward failed to exhibit the reactivation effect. A subsequent experiment replicated this finding and further showed that midazolam did not reduce the memory reactivation effect when injected 2 hr after the reminder episode. From this, it appears that alterations in GABAergic neurotransmission may be an underlying process mediating memory reactivation in the infant rat.