Reinforcing what is good: Appetitive memory strengthening through reconsolidation in the crab Neohelice granulata

M JIMENA SANTOS; MERLO SANTIAGO; MARTIN KLAPPENBACH; ME PEDREIRA

Cordoba

Congreso; XXXIII Congreso SAN; 2018

SAN

Information stored in the memories allows organisms to predict future events based on previous experiences. Thus it must persist even in the absence of the indicators used at the time of acquisition, and might be susceptible to changes in the environment. In this sense, the reconsolidation process opens the possibility to update memory in both strength and content. A recent work performed in rats has shown that brief memory reactivations events lead to memory enhancement as a result of reconsolidation, suggesting memory strengthening. However, this function has not been demonstrated in appetitive paradigms. In this study we were interested in addressing if an appetitive memory could be strengthened by this process in the crab Neohelice granulata. Animals received an appetitive training and were re-exposed to the training context 24 hours later. Given the assumption that reconsolidation processes strengthen the original trace, the resulting memory should be more robust and less sensitive to the amnesic agent cicloheximide when administered minutes before reactivation. Preliminary results revealed that a single re-exposure to the training context triggers the reconsolidation process, and as a result, we observe memory enhancement. Future experiments will allow us to address the mechanisms of this modulation, such as if this strengthening as a consequence of reconsolidation implies plastic changes on the trace which can be revealed through neural correlates or epigenetic change