Somatic and autonomic indexes of recovery from electroconvulsive shock-induced amnesia in rats.

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Abstract
Autonomic response indexes of experimental amnesia have recently been found to have higher electroconvulsive shock (ECS) intensity thresholds and steeper retrograde gradients than have traditional somatic indexes. The hypothesis that recovery from somatically indexed experimental amnesia depends upon the existence of autonomically available residual memory was examined. In a between-subjects design a 200 mA ECS was used to produce amnesia for a tone-footshock pairing as indicated by lick suppression, defection and bradycardia. The next day, these amnesic animals received a reminder footshock outside of the training apparatus, which restored memory on a test trial 24 h later. The behavior of control groups indicated that this reminder effect was due to the restoration of specific memory rather than systemic consequences of treatment. With a within-subjects design, a reminder effect in animals individually shown to be fully amnesic by all 3 response indexes monitored was obtained. The different memory indexes examined do not have reminder-footshock thresholds inversely related to their initial resistance to amnesia. The results support a retrieval-failure view of experimental amnesia and suggest that the same fundamental physiological processes underlie autonomically indexed memory and somatically indexed memory.

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