MEMORY IMPROVEMENT BY STRESS DURING RECONSOLIDATION IN HUMANS.

COCCOZ VERÓNICA1, MALDONADO HÉCTOR1, DELORENZI ALEJANDRO

Cordoba

Congreso; IRCN; 2009

IRCN- SAN

The capacity to predict the future based on its own past experience is crucial to animals and has an understandable adaptive significance. But it is also crucial to change their behavior in the light of the present experiences. The reconsolidation is a process in which the retrieval of previously consolidated memory returns to a labile state. Historically, an operative definition of memory reconsolidation is that it is a process in which the reactivated-labilizated memory can be disrupted by amnesic agents. However, this vulnerability per se does not demonstrate the possible functional roles of reconsolidation. We test the hypothesis that to reopen the possibility for neuromodulators -triggered by real-life events- to change long-term expression would be one functional value of reconsolidation. Experiments included three sessions: a Training Session (Day 1), a Reactivation Session (Day 6) and a Testing Session (Day 7) and four experimental groups which differ in the treatments during the Reactivation Session. Here we found, using a paired associate learning developed in our laboratory specially to study the reconsolidation, that human memory can be improved during reconsolidation by a natural stressor. The memory improvement is disclosed at Testing Session on the condition that the specific reminder that triggers reconsolidation was concurrent with the stressor. This effect during reconsolidation could occur because of the reinforcement of retrieval conversion links that are critical for long-term memory expression. Here, as in our previous experiments in crabs, we show experimental evidence that a natural stressor can change long-term memory expression during reconsolidation in a human declarative memory