Medical students face challenging but important topics they must learn in short periods of time, such as autonomic pharmacology. Autonomic pharmacology is difficult in that it requires students to synthesize detailed anatomy, physiology, clinical reasoning, and pharmacology. The subject poses a challenge to learn as it is often introduced early in…

Fear can potently inhibit ongoing behavior, including reward-seeking, yet the neural circuits that underlie such suppression remain to be clarified. Prior studies have demonstrated that distinct subregions of the rodent medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) differentially affect fear behavior, whereby fear expression is promoted by the more dorsal…

In previous studies, we have shown that acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and phosphodiesterase inhibitors (PDE-Is) are able to improve object memory by enhancing acquisition processes. On the other hand, only PDE-Is improve consolidation processes. Here we show that the cholinesterase inhibitor donepezil also improves memory performance when…

The hippocampal formation has been extensively described as a key component for object recognition in conjunction with place and context. The present study aimed at describing neural mechanisms in the hippocampal formation that support olfactory-tactile (OT) object discrimination in a task where space and context were not taken into account. The…

Long-term fear memory formation in the hippocampus and neocortex depends upon brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) signaling after acquisition. Incremental, appetitive odor discrimination learning is thought to depend substantially on the differentiation of adult-born neurons within the olfactory bulb (OB)--a process that is closely associated…

Drugs of abuse cause changes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and associated regions that impair inhibitory control over drug-seeking. Breaking the contingencies between drug-associated cues and the delivery of the reward during extinction learning reduces rates of relapse. Here we used vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) to induce targeted synaptic…

Habituation is a highly conserved phenomenon that remains poorly understood at the molecular level. Invertebrate model systems, like "Caenorhabditis elegans," can be a powerful tool for investigating this fundamental process. Here we established a high-throughput learning assay that used real-time computer vision software for behavioral…