The formation of long-term memory requires signaling from the synapse to the nucleus to mediate neuronal activity-dependent gene transcription. Synapse-to-nucleus communication is initiated by influx of calcium ions through synaptic NMDA receptors and/or L-type voltage-gated calcium channels and involves the activation of transcription factors by…

Activation of "N"-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDAR) in the prelimbic medial prefrontal cortex (PL mPFC) is necessary for the acquisition of both trace and contextual fear memories, but it is not known how specific NR2 subunits support each association. The NR2B subunit confers unique properties to the NMDAR and may differentially…

Protein synthesis is involved in the consolidation of short-term memory into long-term memory. Previous electrophysiological data concerning LTP in CA3 suggest that protein synthesis in that region might also be necessary for short-term memory. We tested this hypothesis by locally injecting the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin in hippocampal…

Beyond its trophic function, the neurotrophin BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) is well known to crucially mediate synaptic plasticity and memory formation. Whereas recent studies suggested that acute BDNF/TrkB signaling regulates amygdala-dependent fear learning, no impairments of cued fear learning were reported in heterozygous BDNF…

The immediate-early gene early growth response gene-1 (EGR-1, zif-268) has been extensively studied in synaptic plasticity and memory formation in a variety of memory systems. However, a convincing role for EGR-1 in amygdala-dependent memory consolidation processes has yet to emerge. In the present study, we have examined the role of EGR-1 in the…

FE65 is expressed predominantly in the brain and interacts with the C-terminal domain of [beta]-amyloid precursor protein (APP). We examined hippocampus-dependent memory and in vivo long-term potentiation (LTP) at the CA1 synapses with isoform-specific FE65 knockout (p97FE65[superscript -/-]) mice. When examined using the Morris water maze,…

Memory formation requires cAMP signaling; thus, this cascade has been of great interest in the search for cognitive enhancers. Given that medications are administered long-term, we determined the effects of chronically increasing cAMP synthesis in the brain by expressing a constitutively active isoform of the G-protein subunit G[alpha]s…

Targeted mutagenesis in mice has shown that genes from a wide variety of gene families are involved in memory formation. The efficient identification of genes involved in learning and memory could be achieved by random mutagenesis combined with high-throughput phenotyping. Here, we provide the first report of a mutagenesis screen that has…

We use a variation of contextual fear conditioning, called the context pre-exposure facilitation effect (CPFE) to study the rat's memory for context. In this paradigm, the rat is pre-exposed to a conditioning context and later returned to that context, where it is immediately shocked. The memory context is revealed by the fact that pre-exposure to…

Studies on human and animals shed light on the unique hippocampus contributions to relational memory. However, the particular role of each hippocampal subregion in memory processing is still not clear. Hippocampal computational models and theories have emphasized a unique function in memory for each hippocampal subregion, with the CA3 area acting…