Persistent memories induce immediate early genes expression in the cortex

GONZALEZ, MARÍA CAROLINA; KATCHE, CYNTHIA; GOLDIN, ANDREA; MEDINA, JORGE H.

Huerta Grande, Córdoba

Congreso; I Reunión Conjunta de Neurociencias (IRCN). XI Taller Argentino de Neurociencias. XVII Reunión de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (SAN); 2009

A fundamental question in memory research is how brains can formenduring memories. Basically, there are two main models of memoryconsolidation: The most accepted one, establishes that memories areinitially and temporarily stored in the hippocampus and later transferred tothe cortex for persistent storage during a process named systemconsolidation. An alternative view, proposes that the cortex may also havea crucial role in the initial steps of memory formation and the hippocampusmay not be disengaged from memory processing as early as it has beenoriginally proposed.Little is known about the molecular, cellular and systems mechanismsunderlying permanent memory storage. However, recent studies havebegun to shed light on how remote memories are organized in the cortex.The aim of this work is to study the role of neocortical areas in inhibitoryavoidance (IA) memory consolidation and persistence. By usingimmunocytochemistry technique, we evaluated the expression ofimmediate early genes (IEGs) - zif268, c-fos – after two types of trainingthat generate memories with different duration. Our preliminary findingssuggest that late after training, differential gene expression is induced in thecortex and that the level of expression is correlated with the duration of thememory.Having this in mind, we further intend to investigate the role of theexpression of these IEGs in the storage of persistent memories.