Correction for Liu et al., β-Arrestin–biased signaling mediates memory reconsolidation

Interfering with contextual fear memories by post-reactivation administration of propranolol in mice: a series of null findings

“…Notably, raising the foot shock level in Experiment 2 did not lead to higher freezing levels during reactivation than in Experiment 1 (t70 = 0.876, p = 0.384, compare Figures 1D and 2D). It also bears mentioning that this reduction in fear responding by post-reactivation administration of propranolol after collapsing the data of Experiment 2a and 2b is considerably smaller than in previous studies (e.g., Liu et al, 2015;Villain et al, 2016).…”

“…The null findings do not seem to be attributable to a lack of power. The number of mice that were included in each experiment were comparable to previous studies in which large effects were observed (e.g., Przybyslawski et al, 1999;Dȩbiec and Ledoux, 2004;Liu et al, 2015).…”

“…The null findings do not seem to be attributable to a lack of power. The number of mice that were included in each experiment were comparable to previous studies in which large effects were observed (e.g., Przybyslawski et al, 1999; Dȩbiec and Ledoux, 2004; Liu et al, 2015). We also did not find robust effects when the data of similar experiments (Experiment 1 and 2, Experiment 3 and 4, Experiment 3 and 6) or all experiments performed within the same research instrument (TSE, or Med Associates, see supplementary results) were collapsed.…”

“…We performed a series of experiments to study the effects of post-reactivation, systemic administration of propranolol on contextual fear memory in mice. The eventual purpose of this study was to elucidate the neural mechanisms by which this β-AR antagonist has been shown to interfere with contextual fear memories (Abrari et al, 2008;Liu et al, 2015), and test ways to overcome boundary conditions that potentially complicate application of post-reactivation amnesia in clinical practice (Kindt, 2014).…”

“…We performed a series of experiments to study the effects of post-reactivation, systemic administration of propranolol on contextual fear memory in mice. The eventual purpose of this study was to elucidate the neural mechanisms by which this β-AR antagonist has been shown to interfere with contextual fear memories (Abrari et al, 2008; Liu et al, 2015), and test ways to overcome boundary conditions that potentially complicate application of post-reactivation amnesia in clinical practice (Kindt, 2014). However, in a total of 12 experiments (including replications) that involved different fear acquisition procedures, drugs (i.e., not only propranolol, but also anisomycin), and read-outs of post-reactivation amnesia (i.e., behavioral, cellular, molecular), our attempts to observe robust amnesic effects were largely unsuccessful.…”