Reward dependent task induces gliogenesis and neurogenesis in the mPFC-HIPP circuit

RAPANELLI M; FRICK, LR; ZANUTTO, BS

San Diego, CA

Congreso; 40th Annual Meeting of the Society of Neuroscience; 2010

Society for Neuroscience

Learning a task implies remodelling of the neural circuits in the brain, these changes could be achieved by synaptic plasticity events and neurogenesis. One of the learning paradigms used in rodents for studying goal directed behaviors, there is the operant conditioning task. Among the areas involved in acquistion of an operant conditioning task, there are the medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC) and the Hippocampus (HIPP). The dentate gyrus (DG) of the HIPP is one of two areas where adult neurogenesis takes place through adulthood, whereas, the presence of this phenomena in the mPFC is still controversial. By using incorporation of BrdU to proliferating cells and confocal microscopy to establish the phenotype, we used together with the BrdU, markers for astrocytes (GFAP),immature neurons (DCX) and mature neurons (NeuN). We evaluated the generation of new born cells due to learning in five experimental groups: animals that were learning the task (IT, between 50-65% of responses) and animals that completely learned the task (Tr, 100% of responses and a latency time below 5s for three consecutive sessions), Box Control IT (BCIT, animals spent the same time in the box with lever retracted until IT finish), Box Control Tr (BCTr, animals spent the same time in the box with lever retracted until IT finish) and Control (animals that never leaves bioterium). Here, we found that in IT and Tr group the number of BrdU+/GFAP+ cells was higher than those found for BCIT (p