QUANTITATIVE TRAIT LOCI ANALYSIS AFFECTING CONTEXTUAL CONDITIONING INMICE

In an extensive backcross of mice between C3H/HeJ (C3H) and C57BL/6J ( B6), we sought to map genes that influence learning and memory as meas ured by performance in a contextual fear-conditioning paradigm. Our re sults indicate that there are several genetic regions that have a stro ng influence on performance in this paradigm. The strongest influences map to the proximal and distal ends of chromosome 1 (led scores of 5. 14 and 4.76, respectively). Other chromosomal regions (chromosomes 3, 7, 8, 9 and 18) were also identified as candidates for regions contain ing genes influencing contextual fear conditioning, with rod scores ra nging from 1.8 to 2.7.