Hi Mani!

Yes, the foot shock does reach the hippocampus so that an association can be formed between the unconditioned stimulus and the context, or here the conditioned stimulus. 

However, it tends to be a weaker association than with the cued fear conditioning task.  If you are focusing on contextual fear conditioning, you will have to do either more foot shocks over the course of your training period or have stronger foot shocks in order to achieve a robust response. 

Hope this helps!

Kristy

Thanks Kristy.

I wanted to know the anatomical pathway that brings the foot shock signal from the foot to the hippocampus. If you get a chance, could you please let me know of some papers where they describe this pathway?

You are correct about the weaker association. We have to give 5 mild foot shocks to get about 40% freezing in C57 mice under reverse cycle.

Best

Mani

Ah, I see!  I apologize for the confusion on my part. 

I did do a quick little search and ran across some that might help you, but I haven't had a chance to review them myself.  One is "Neurobiology of Pavlovian Fear Conditioning."

I think that one may be the best one for what you are looking for, but I also found   "Understanding contextual fear conditioning: insights from a two-process," The Neuroscience of Mammalian Associative Learning, and Hippocampal CA3 Output is Crucial for Ripple-Associated Reactivation and Consolidation of Memory.

I do hope that one or all of these can help you.

Best Regards,

Kristy

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.neuro.24.1.897?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763404000934

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070213?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728553/

Thanks Kristy for those references. I am looking into this a bit deeper as it is hard to find the anatomical pathway. Will keep you posted.

-Mani