Labilize or not labilize? That is the question

MARIA SOL FUSTIÑANA; FREUDENTHAL R,; ARTURO ROMANO

Huerta Grande

Congreso; IIRCN; 2010

TAN Y SAN

Once a memory is consolidated, the presentation of a reminder can induce reconsolidation, a process that has inherent stages: reactivation, labilización and restabilization of the memory trace. We are studying the labilization process in two contextual associative models in phylogeneticaly distant species: context-signal memory in the crab Chasmagnathus and fear conditioning in mouse. Here, we developed firstly a pavlovian-conditioning protocol in crabs designed to increase the contingency between the context and the stimulus. We found that this new paradigm is context specific, and implies protein synthesis and GABA receptors. We also found that a brief reexposure is sufficient to induce the reconsolidation, which is dependent on NF-kB activation. These results demonstrate that the protocol is suitable for the study of memory labilization. In the second part of this study, we analysed the role of the proteasome system in memory labilization. A previous study indicated that the labilization process involved protein degradation by the proteasome. Here we found that the inhibition of the proteasome system block labilization, impairing drugs amnesic effect during memory reconsolidation.