The emotional tagging: stress and the promotion of durable memories.

PAMELA LOPES DA CUNHA; MARÍA EUGENIA VILLAR; BALLARINI FABRICIO; MANUEL LOPEZ PASOS; VIOLA HAYDÉE

Mar del Plata, Argentina

Congreso; XXX REUNIÓN ANUAL DE LA SOCIEDAD ARGENTINA DE INVESTIGACION EN NEUROCIENCIAS; 2015

Long -term memory (LTM) formation requires protein synthesis. We have demonstratedthat a weak learning task which only induces short-term memory (STM) can be stabilizedinto LTM if another closer event provides the necessary proteins. It was postulated thatthese proteins could be capture at tagged sites induced by the weak learning task by aprocess referred to as behavioral tagging. Thus, we decided to investigate whether anacute stress can promote the formation of LTM from a weak training by providing theproteins necessary for its consolidation. For this purpose, rats were subjected to a weaktraining (spatial object recognition ?SOR) that induces only STM and, at different timesclose to training, they were exposed to a stressful situation (an elevated plataform-EP- for30 min). Our results show that acute stress experienced one hour after SOR trainingpromotes its LTM formation. We studied the dependence of this phenomenon on proteinsynthesis and also on glucocorticoids (GR) and mineralocorticoids receptors (MR) activity inthe dorsal hippocampus. The local infusion of Emetine, Anysomicin, Mifepristone orSpironolactone before the exposure to the EP shows that promoting effect of stress on SOR-LTM formation depends on protein synthesis and GR-MR activity in the dorsalhippocampus. Finally, we present data aimed to investigate the role of stress induced byexams on the promotion of LTM in students.