Reactivation-dependent amnesia for contextual fear memories in rodents: Limited replicability and publication bias

SIGWALD, ERIC L.; LUYTEN, LAURA; VAN DEN NOORTGATE, WIM; SCHROYENS, NATALIE; BECKERS, TOM

Leuven

Encuentro; Scientific Meeting of the Leuven Brain Institute; 2020

Leuven Brain Institute

Research on memory reconsolidation has been booming in the last two decades, with numerous high-impact publications reporting promising amnestic interventions in rodents and humans. However, our own recently-published failed replication attempts of reactivation-dependent amnesia for fear memories in rats suggest that such amnestic effects are not always readily found and that they depend on subtle and possibly uncontrollable parameters, posing a challenge for clinical translation. The discrepancy between our observations and published studies in rodents suggests that the literature in this field might be biased. The aim of the current study was to gauge the presence of publication bias in a well-delineated part of the reconsolidation literature. We performed a systematic review of the literature on reactivation-dependent amnesia for contextual fear memories using commonly-used amnestic drugs in rodents and statistically investigated publication bias in this sample. To examine this further, and to get a better idea of the replicability of this effect, we are currently collecting unpublished data. We will present the preliminary results from our ongoing analyses and discuss their implications.