Role of hippocampal remapping in contextual memory

AZUL SILVA; PEDRO BEKINSCHTEIN; MARIANO BELLUSCIO

Congreso; XXXIII Congreso Anual Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias 2018; 2018

TheHippocampus (HP) plays a central role in the encoding, consolidationand retrieval of episodic memories. Some hippocampal neurons, calledplace cells (PC), fire whenever an animal is at a certain location inthe environment; however, only a subset of the PC fire in any givenenvironment. When the environment changes, PC can change theiractivity (remapping). Accumulating evidence has suggested that thefunctions of PC, extend well beyond a specific role in mapping thephysical space. It has been suggested that the hippocampal ability ofstoring and distinguishing between different situations and contexts,can be related with place cell?s remapping.Severalstudies have shown how the CA3, a hippocampal region, can eitherremap or not as consequence of the changes in contextual clues.Still, there is no study showing how this change in neural activitycorrelates with the behavioural response. In other words, It?sstill unknown whether when an animal recognizes a certain context asnew, there is remapping in the activity of CA3 or not. The ongoingproject takes advantage of a behavioral test that allowed us todiscriminate if an animal recognizes a context as new, or as one theyalready knows. We carried out electrophysiological recordings in CA3region of the HP while they were performing the task in order tocorrelate the remapping and the evocation of different contexts.p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 115%; }