MICRO-POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY STUDY OF MEMORY RECONSOLIDATION.

DE LA FUENTE V; MEDINA C; FALASCO G; URRUTIA L; VÁZQUEZ S; PEDREIRA ME; ROMANO A

Mar del Plata, Pcia de Buenos Aires

Congreso; XXX Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencia (SAN); 2015

SAN

After learning, the new information is encoded in neural circuits. For that encoding, neuronal plastic changes occur to stabilize the memory trace, a process termed consolidation. If some cues of the learning event are presented to the subjects after the memory is fully consolidated, the memory trace can become labile and requires a process of re-stabilization called reconsolidation. For the past decades, labilization/reconsolidation processes has been studied from behavioral, cellular and molecular approaches but no studies have emerged to elucidate neural circuits subserving memory dynamics during these processes. Here, we studied the mouse brain from a functional perspective using small-animal Positron Emission Tomography (PET). The main objective was to studyfunctional dynamics after the labilization/reconsolidation phases of memory in contextual fear conditioning in mice. We found differences in glucose consumption mainly in ectorhinal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala in re-exposed animals compared to non-reexposed animals. Moreover, animals that only evocated but did not labilized the trace showed differences with mice that labilized and reconsolidated. The differences in glucose consumptions showed a marked temporal and spatial course, and were context-specific. This work opens new insights in the dynamics of activation of different brain areas during memory reconsolidation.