A HIGHLY DEMANDING WORKING MEMORY TASK IS ABLE TO INTERFERE THE RECONSOLIDATION OF A THREAT MEMORY

PICCO SOLEDAD; FERNÁNDEZ RODRIGO S; PEDREIRA MARIA EUGENIA

Congreso; Congreso Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencia; 2019

Consolidated memories can be reactivated into a labile state by the presentation of a reminder. Thereactivation of the memory trace is followed by a process of re-stabilization known asreconsolidation. In most of reconsolidation studies, a second task, with similar characteristics tothose of the target memory, is used as an amnesic agent.Anxiety manifest as a persistent and generalized defensive system, activated when predictedaversive events are perceived as a threat and uncertain. In laboratory, threat conditioning hasbeen taken as the paradigm for assessing fear memories and anxiety related disorders. In theframework of the reconsolidation the idea that this process would allow to modify this type ofmaladaptive memories has been proposed.Here we aim to interfere the re-stabilization of an implicit aversive memory using a working memorytask, which aimed to overload this transient memory system. To reach such goal, we design a 3 dayprotocol, and compared a trained threat conditioning group, that 24hs later have or not a reminder,or a fake working memory task; 48hs after, all 3 groups perform an extinction follow by areinstatement and different valanced and cognitive systems tasks. We revealed that that thememory reconsolidation interference is effective for the implicit memory.