Extent of memory strengthening due to reconsolidation in episodic memories.

BERON, JUAN CRUZ; FERNÁNDEZ, RODRIGO; PEDREIRA MARIA EUGENIA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; XXXVII Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (SAN); 2022

SAN

Memory reconsolidation is the mechanism by which consolidated memories are updated in strength and/or content. An underlying hypothesis to these findings suggests that reconsolidation would be “reactivation specific”, implying that only the reactivated elements would be susceptible to modifications. Our main goal was to study the extent of the strengthening due to reconsolidation, that is, to see whether it affects not reactivated elements. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a 3-day study. 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 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 previous experiments, the memory for target elements was strengthened in group RC, but not in RX. Here we found that the RC group also showed better recognition of the new objects (peripheric memory) than the RX group and also showed greater sensitivity at discriminating between conditions.