LEC-NAc neurons are necessary for the encoding, but not the retrieval of contextual fear memory. (A) Circuit-specific DREADD approach to inhibit LEC-NAc neurons during footshock-context conditioning. (B) Contextual fear memory test freezing time across 1 min bins in mCherry controls (mCh) and Gi-DREADD mice (Gi). Gi mice had decreased freezing across the test bins compared to mCh controls. Two-way RM ANOVA followed by Holm–Sidak post hoc comparisons, (*) P < 0.05. (C) Percent of freezing time for the entire test within each group. Gi mice spent less % time freezing compared to mCh mice. t-test, (*) P < 0.05. (D) Circuit-specific DREADD approach to inhibit LEC-NAc neurons during contextual fear memory test. (E) Contextual fear memory test freezing time across 1 min bins in mCh controls and Gi mice. There were no differences between groups. Two-way RM ANOVA, P > 0.05. (F) Percent of freezing time for the entire test within each group. There were no differences between groups. t-test, P > 0.05.
