Multiple context discrimination in adult rats: sex variability and dynamics of time-dependent generalization of an aversive memory
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Memory generalization involves the transfer of conditioned fear responses to novel contexts, a phenomenon observed in systems consolidation, whereby a time-dependent reduction in discrimination precision occurs due to the reorganization of brain regions supporting memory retrieval. To understand the fine temporal structure of this process across sexes, young adult female and male rats were trained in contextual fear conditioning and tested in the same or one of three distinct novel contexts at 2, 28, or 45 days post-training. Neutral contexts were designed to allow graded levels of fear expression relative to the training context, and sex differences were evident at the recent memory test. This pattern, however, disappeared over time due to partial generalization, with fear converging into similar, higher values, grouped into two levels for both sexes. In all experiments, females were better discriminators and displayed lower fear responses than males, apparently prioritizing different sensory modalities, with multivariate analysis suggesting that chamber size was salient for females and floor texture for males. This study is the first to compare fear responses between adult female and male rats across multiple neutral contexts and time points revealing several dimorphic findings.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".