IBCN   20355
INSTITUTO DE BIOLOGIA CELULAR Y NEUROCIENCIA "PROFESOR EDUARDO DE ROBERTIS"
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
VTA controls protein synthesis-dependent memory consolidation in the hippocampus
Autor/es:
MONCADA, DIEGO
Lugar:
San Diego
Reunión:
Congreso; Neuroscience 2013; 2013
Institución organizadora:
Society for Neuroscience (USA)
Resumen:
During the last years we have demonstrate that the formation Long-term memories (LTM) relays on a tagging and capture process. On other words, that LTM formation requires of at least two parallel and complementary processes: the setting of a mark (the ?learning-tag? -LT-) that determines which memory will be stored and where, as well as the synthesis of those Plasticity Related Proteins (PRPs) that once captured by those tags will effectively allow the consolidation of a LTM (Moncada and Viola 2007; Ballarini et al 2009). In addition, by analyzing the mechanism associated to one or the other process we have recently show that D1/D5-Dopaminergic and β-adrenergic receptors, are specifically required in the hippocampus for the synthesis of those PRPs required for the consolidation of the Inhibitory Avoidance (IA) memory, while the NMDA receptors are also responsible of setting de IA-LT through a mechanism that depends on the activity of CAMKIIα and PKA (Moncada et al 2011). Taking into account these results we focused our research in identifying those brain structures responsible for the synthesis of PRPs. In this work we contrasted our hypothesis that the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA), one of the main sources of dopamine in the brain, is indeed responsible of regulating the synthesis of PRPs on those brain structures (such as the hippocampus) were memories will be actually stored. Here, we used a behavioral tagging experimental design that combines a weak training in either the IA or the Spatial Object Recognition (SOR) associated to electrophysiological stimulations of the VTA. While these weak trainings are only able to induce transient forms of memories, here we show that the activation of this brain structure within a critical time window is capable to promote the formation of LTMs for both of these hippocampus-dependent learning tasks. Moreover, this promotion of memory depends on the functionality of the hippocampal D1/D5-dopaminergic receptors at the moment of the stimulation and on the synthesis PRPs in the hippocampus triggered by the activation of the VTA. In addition, the stimulation of this structure is also capable to prevent the amnesia induced by the infusion of the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin before a strong IA and SOR trainings. As a whole, our results show that the VTA is one of the brain structures commissioned to regulate the hippocampal protein synthesis required for the consolidation of the IA and SOR memories. 1 Moncada D and Viola H: J Neurosci. (2007) 27(47):12761-3. 2 Ballarini et al.: PNAS (2009) 106(34):14599-604 3 Moncada et al.: PNAS (2011) 108(31):12931-6