Memory strengthening by episodic generalization due to reconsolidation

BERON JUAN CRUZ; PICCO SOLEDAD; FERNÁNDEZ RODRIGO S; PEDREIRA MARIA EUGENIA

Congreso; Congreso de la Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Neuroscience Societies (FALAN); 2022

INTRODUCTIONMemory reconsolidation is the mechanism by which consolidated memories are updated in strength and/or content. Thus, memory reactivation enhances the retention of reactivated items at long delays. An underlying hypothesis to these findings suggests that reconsolidation would be “reactivation specific”, implying that only the reactivated elements after consolidation would be susceptible to modifications. However, memories are intrinsically associative, which implies that they are integrated into interconnected-associated. Reactivation of certain elements of the target memory should therefore affect elements that were not reactivated but are associatedOBJECTIVESIn this project, our main goal is to study the extent of the strengthening due to reconsolidation, that is, to see whether it affects not reactivated elements.METHODSTo test this hypothesis, we conducted a 3-day study (n = 71). On day-1, subjects learned face-name pairs (target memory) along with the interleaved presentation of common use objects (peripheric elements). Subjects were instructed to learn the face-name pairs (target memory) and between these presentations they were asked to make a judgment call on a certain aspect of the object shown. On day-2 two, types of reminders of the target memory were used. The group called RC received a reminder with prediction error that leads to reconsolidation, and the other group, RX, received a different reminder, without prediction error that doesn’t involve reconsolidation. On day-3 both the target and peripheric elements of the memory were evaluated. In accordance with the previous experiments, the memory for target elements was strengthened in group RC, but not in RXRESULTSWe found that the RC group showed better recognition of the new objects (peripheric memory) than the RX one and also showed greater sensitivity at discriminating between conditionsCONCLUSIONSStrengthening of the episodic memory as a result of RC reactivation-reconsolidation didn’t circumscribe to the directly reactivated target elements, it also affected peripheric elements that weren’t reactivated but were part of the initial acquisition context.