Dissociating long term memory storage from expression: an optophysiology approach in the crab Chasmagnathus

MAZA FRANCISCO; LOCATELLI FERNANDO; DELORENZI ALEJANDRO

Huerta Grande, Cordoba

Congreso; Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias 2012; 2012

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

The canonic view for amnesias suggests storage or, alternatively, retrieval impairments.  However, results in our group have shown that some experimental amnesias cannot be explained by these views. Instead, they are explained as a deficit in memory expression (i.e. the memory is stored and can be reactivated but it?s not expressed). Here we introduce an approach in achieving neural related evidence for this Hypothesis: we propose that memory storage and expression are different attributes of memories that could be based in different neural interactions. We have made in vivo calcium imaging in Chasmagnathus´s Lateral Protocerebrum (a neuropil proposed to be involved in sensory integration and memory process) and we analyzed whether the induced changes in neural activity correlate with memory expression (during training and 30 minutes after).  Then, we tested whether two kind of amnesic treatments, one proposed to interfere with the expression of memories and the other proposed to interfere with memory storage, differentially affect the plastic changes induced by the training protocol. Our results suggest that the changes induced in the neural networks of the Lateral Protocerebrum reflect, at short term, long term memory storage but not long term memory expression.