POR) or perirhinal (PER) cortex damage impairs acquisition and expression of contextual fear, but the nature of the impairment remains unclear. This study used a contextual fear discrimination paradigm that biased subjects toward using a configural, rather than an elemental, strategy to distinguish between 2 contexts, 1 of which was paired with a mild footshock. Control rats discriminated between 2 contexts when a combination of several cues could be used (Experiment 1), but not when individual

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... sensory cues were manipulated (Experiment 2). Rats with POR or PER lesions could not discriminate between the shock and no-shock contexts when multiple cues differentiated the contexts (Experiment 3). The results indicate that both the POR and PER have a role in configural learning of contextual fear.