INDUCTION OF LONG-TERM MEMORY BY EXPOSURE TO NOVELTY REQUIRES PROTEIN SYNTHESIS: EVIDENCE FOR A BEHAVIORAL TAGGING

MONCADA D; VIOLA H

JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE

SOC NEUROSCIENCE

Año: 2007 vol. 27 p. 7476 - 7481

0270-6474

A behavioral analogue of the synaptic tagging and capture process -a key property of synaptic plasticity- has been recently predicted. Here we demonstrate that a weak inhibitory avoidance (IA) training, that induces short- but not long-term memory (LTM), can be consolidated into LTM by an exploration to a novel, but not a familiar, environment occurring close in time to the training session. This memory-promoting effect caused by novelty depends upon dopamine D1/D5 receptors activation and requires newly synthesized proteins in the dorsal hippocampus. Thus, our results indicate the existence of a behavioral tagging process in which the exploration to a novel environment provides the plasticity-related proteins to stabilize the IA memory trace.