Behavioral-tagging as a mechanism for aversive-memory formation under acute stress.

TINTORELLI, R; LOPES DA CUNHA, P; CORREA, J; BUDRIESI, P; VIOLA, H

virtual

Congreso; Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias; 2020

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

Stress is used to describe physiological and behavioral changes elicited by events that are interpreted asthreatening or challenging to an individual [1]. Several substances are released in response to stressful events, asglucocorticoids (GC) and noradrenaline. Diverse brain areas as the hippocampus express a large number ofmineralocorticoid (MR) and glucocorticoid receptors (GR), which bind GC with different affinities. Stress regulation canimpact cognitive process and different works have shown that extrinsic stressful events acting temporally close to alearning session can modulate the memory consolidation [2],[3].The Behavioral Tagging hypothesis (BT) postulates that a weak learning experience, that only induces shorttermmemory (STM), can be benefited from another event that provides the plasticity-related products (PRPs) toestablish a lasting memory [4]. According to BT, the weak learning sets a transient neural-tag at specific activated sitesand its temporal and spatial convergence with the PRPs allows long-term memory (LTM) formation. Different eventswere described as protein suppliers that promote several types of memories and, here, we wondered if acute stresscould promote the LTM formation of an aversive task. BT also proposes that the tags set by different tasks located in acommon population of neurons could compete for the available PRPs. In that sense, a weak experience would onlybenefit from PRPs provided by another event, but two experiences going through a consolidation process, with their owntags capable of capturing their PRPs, could compete for these resources and LTM formation [5].