This behavioral task is conducted by first placing the subject in the brightly-illuminated white compartment facing the sliding  guillotine door. After the subject turns in the opposite direction, the door is lowered into the floor allowing free access to the darker compartment of the apparatus. When the subject rotates again and faces the open door, a timer is started and the latency to completely enter the dark compartment is recorded. Upon entering the dark compartment, the sliding door is raised and a footshock is administered (from 0.35 to 0.45 mA, for 0.5 or 1 second). Immediately after the footshock training, the subject is removed from the apparatus and administered a pharmacological treatment either systemically or directly into a specific brain structure.

Memory for the footshock training is assessed by a retention test administered from 24 to 96 hours later. In this test, the subjects are placed in the illuminated compartment as before, the door is lowered and the latency to enter the dark compartment where footshock was received earlier (maximum 600 s) is recorded and used as the index of retention.

During radial maze training, the rats are placed in the center of the maze with the entrance to 4 baited arms open. The remaining four non-baited arms are blocked by removable clear Plexiglass doors. After entering the open arms and consuming all of the pellets in the maze, the rats are returned to their home cage for a brief delay. They are then returned to the maze for a retention test. During the "win-shift" retention test, each of the 8 arms are open, however, pellets are now placed only in the arms that were previously blocked. Entries into the new baited arms are recorded as correct responses while visits to unbaited arms are scored as errors. Repeated entry into any arm is also considered an error. All subjects begin training with a 5 min delay between training and the "win-shift" retention test. After reaching a criterion of 80% correct (4 out of 5 correct responses) for two consecutive days, the animals are moved to a 15 min training retention interval. After achieving the 80% criterion for two consecutive days with the 15 min interval, subjects are moved to the testing phase of the study on the following day.

On the test day, subjects are placed on the maze with the 4 arms blocked and 4 arms open and baited. After consuming the pellets in the 4 baited arms, subjects are removed from the maze and given a drug treatment and retained in the testing room for 18 hours before being administered the retention test. The procedures for the 18 hour retention test are identical to those used with the 5 and 15 min delay with all arms open but with food found only in the previously blocked arms. The number of errors or the mean percentage of correct responses the animals make in locating the pellets in the 4 new baited arms serve as  indices of retention.

Aversive Y-maze Discrimination Task

The animals in this experiment are given one training trial per day for 6 consecutive days. Training begins by placing each animal in the stem of the Y-maze. The animals are then given up to 5 minutes to locate and consume 10 pellets (45mg each) placed in a food cup on the rear wall of the right alley and 5 pellets placed in the food cup at the very end of the left alley. A trial ends when all 15 of the food pellets are retrieved and consumed in the maze. The animals are then allowed to freely explore the alleys for an additional 20 s before being returned to their home cages. Digital timers are used to record a) the initial latency to enter either alley at the start of training b) the seconds spent in each alley before all pellets were consummed c) the seconds spent in an alley after pellets were consummed d) the cumulative latency to consume all pellets from the beginning of a trial and e) the time spent in the non-baited stem or start alley of the y-maze.

On Day 6 of training, the cardboard insert covering the floor of the maze is removed from only the right alley to expose the stainless steel footshock plates. As in the previous days of training, each animal was allowed to consume all of the food pellets placed in the left and right alley. However, when the subject returns to the right alley and approaches the empty food cup, a mild footsh ock is administered for 0.5 seconds in that alley. Immediately after the footshock, the animal is removed from the maze and randomly assigned to a drug treatment group.

Retention of the footshock training is assessed on Day 7 and 8 under two separate conditions. The latency to enter the right alley and the number of seconds to consume all of the pellets in the right alley where footshock was received during training serves as indices of retention on both tests. On the first retention test, the cardboard insert is returned to the right alley as during the first 5 days of training. Thus, the stainless steel plates from which footshock was delivered on day 6 are concealed from the animals on this retention test. This manipulation provides an assesment of the animals memory of the footshock training in the absence of the most salient contextual cue associated with the footshock (i.e. the stainless steel footshock plates). During the second retention test given on Day 8, the cardboard insert in the right alley is removed to expose the stainless steel plates. On this day, the animals are exposed to identical contextual cues that were present on the day of footshock training. The two different tests are expected to reveal whether a) memory for an emotional experience is facilitated by specific pharmacological agents under normal testing conditions and b) to assess whether these treatments affect retention under conditions in which memory is weakened by removing salient cues that are linked or associated with an arousing event such as footshock.

Appetitive Y-Maze Light-Dark Discrimination Task

During training each animal is given 25 light-dark discrimination trials on Day 1 and an additional 10 training trials on Day 2. For Trial 1 on each day of training and on the subsequent retention tests, subjects are placed in the stem of the maze facing the rear wall with the cue light off in that arm and the door raised. Once the door is lowered, the rats are allowed to choose between a dark unbaited arm or an illuminated arm baited with 3 sucrose pellets. After entering one of the arms, the door is raised enclosing the rat in that choice section for a period of 10 seconds. A new arm is then baited and the back panel in that arm  illuminated. The next trial then begins by lowering the door and allowing the animal to choose between the new dark unbaited arm or the illuminated baited arm. After the 10 training trials on Day 2, each subject is removed from the maze and given a drug treatment. Retention tests are given on Days 4 and 9 and consisted of the same procedures that were used during training (see below). Mean percentage of correct responses and number of trials to reach 5 total correct responses serve as indices of retention.