Dietary-induced obesity disrupts trace fear conditioning and decreases hippocampal reelin expression

Dorsal hippocampal mRNA expression of inflammatory and neuroplasticity markers was analysed at the end of the experiment, 10 weeks of diet. Of these, mRNA expression of reelin, which is known to be important in long term potentiation and neuronal plasticity, was significantly reduced in cafeteria diet fed rats (P = 0.003). This implicates reductions in hippocampal plasticity in the contextual fear memory deficits seen in the cafeteria diet fed rats.