Effects of memory age and interval of fear extinction sessions on contextual fear extinction

• An extinction of 5 consecutive days prevented the spontaneous recovery of fear memory.
• Fear memory was not affected by a passage of time.
• Older fear memory was more sensitive to fear extinction.
• A consecutiveness of extinction was not necessary for the prevention effect.

Fear extinction is a major task in our understanding of the biological mechanisms of exposure therapy, one of the most used treatments for stress-related disorders. It was recently reported that an extinction of 5 consecutive days prevents spontaneous recovery of fear memory. Memory age and the timing of fear extinction influence the effect of fear extinction. In this study, we used contextual fear extinction in adult male mice to examine whether memory age influences an extinction of 5 consecutive days and whether consecutiveness is necessary to prevent spontaneous recovery. Our results showed that, although fear memory was not affected by the passage of time, the old fear memory (28 days after fear conditioning) was more sensitive to fear extinction than the young fear memory (7 days after fear conditioning). Additionally, we demonstrated that consecutiveness of extinction sessions is not necessary to prevent spontaneous recovery. Instead, fear extinction sessions at spaced intervals were found to be more effective than consecutive extinction sessions for young fear memory. Our results suggest that taking memory age and the interval of fear extinction sessions into consideration would help to optimize exposure therapy.