CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Memory reconsolidation occurs when a retrieving event destabilizes transiently a consolidated memory, triggering thereby a new process of re-stabilization that ensures memory persistence. Although this phenomenon has received wide attention, the effect of new information co-occurring with the reconsolidation process has been less explored. Here we demonstrate that a memory-retrieving event sets a neural tag, which enables the reconsolidation of memory after binding proteins provided by the original or a different contiguous experience. We characterized the specific temporal window during which this association is effective and identified the PKA and the ERK 1/2 pathways as the mechanisms related to the setting of the reconsolidation tag and the synthesis of proteins. Our results show, therefore, that memory reconsolidation is mediated by a ?behavioral tagging? process, which is common to different memory forms. They represent a significant advance in understanding the fate of memories reconsolidated while being adjacent to other events, and provide a novel tool for designing non-invasive strategies to attenuate (pathological/traumatic) or improve (education-related) memories.