IFIBYNE   05513
INSTITUTO DE FISIOLOGIA, BIOLOGIA MOLECULAR Y NEUROCIENCIAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
sEMINARIO
Autor/es:
ME PEDREIRA
Lugar:
Cambridge
Reunión:
Seminario; Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Seminars; 2012
Institución organizadora:
Department of Psychology
Resumen:
Reconsolidation: A long way from crabs to humans The idea that memories are immutable after consolidation has been challenged. Several reports have shown that after the presentation of a specific reminder, reactivated old memories become labile and again susceptible to amnesic agents. Such vulnerability diminishes with the progress of time and implies a re-stabilization phase, usually referred to as reconsolidation. From the extensive studies developed in the last decade, a general conclusion emerged. In fact, the term reconsolidation is not used to represent an exact recapitulation of initial consolidation, but rather to make memory stable again. From the beginning one question has emerged recurrently: what is the function of memory reconsolidation? Two non-mutual functions have been postulated to address the question. One of them suggests that reconsolidation updates memory contents, while the other proposes that the process strengthens the original memory. Taking into account the role claimed for the phenomenon, we have proposed that reconsolidation is not triggered whenever a memory is retrieved; as a consequence, the identification of general and boundary conditions for reconsolidation are, for us, central topics. Thus, the strength of the memory trace, the age of the memory, the duration of the reactivation, which can shift from reconsolidation to extinction, and the discrepancy between expected and current events –named as mismatch- are parameters that determine the occurrence, or not, of reconsolidation In humans, reconsolidation has been reported in a procedural motor-skill task in pavlovian fear conditioning and in a verbal learning task.  In particular, our group not only reported that declarative human memories undergo reconsolidation (Forcato et al., 2007) but also described boundary conditions necessary to trigger labilization (Forcato et al., 2009). We also demonstrated updating and strengthening in the framework of declarative memory reconsolidation in humans (Forcato et al., 2010; Forcato et al., 2011). Finally, we studied the role of the GABAergic system during the reconsolidation of this declarative memory by the use of benzodiazepines (Rodriguez et al., submitted).