In the adult brain, the expression of NT-3 is largely confined to the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG), an area exhibiting significant neurogenesis. Using a conditional mutant line in which the "NT-3" gene is deleted in the brain, we investigated the role of NT-3 in adult neurogenesis, hippocampal plasticity, and memory. Bromodeoxyuridine…

We investigated whether postextinction training infusion of PD098059, a selective inhibitor of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activation, into the medial prefrontal cortex, would impair retention of extinction learning in rats. We found that immediate, but not late (2 or 4 h), postextinction infusion of PD098059 provoked a full return of…

After extinction of fear to a Pavlovian conditional stimulus (CS), contextual stimuli come to regulate the expression of fear to that CS. There is growing evidence that the context dependence of memory retrieval after extinction involves the hippocampus. In the present experiment, we examine whether hippocampal involvement in memory retrieval…

In humans, impaired recognition memory following lesions thought to be limited to the hippocampal region has been demonstrated for a wide variety of tasks. However, the importance of the human hippocampus for olfactory recognition memory has scarcely been explored. We evaluated the ability of memory-impaired patients with damage thought to be…

Memory consolidation is defined as the time window during which the memory trace is susceptible to behavioral, electrical, or pharmacological interventions. Here, the authors presented rats with two novel tastes at consecutive time intervals. Clear interference was evident when a novel taste formed the second taste input whereby, surprisingly, the…

We tested recognition memory for items and associations in memory-impaired patients with bilateral lesions thought to be limited to the hippocampal region. In Experiment 1 (Combined memory test), participants studied words and then took a memory test in which studied words, new words, studied word pairs, and recombined word pairs were presented in…

We recently described a critical role for adrenergic signaling in the hippocampus during contextual and spatial memory retrieval. To determine which neurons are activated by contextual memory retrieval and its sequelae in the presence and absence of adrenergic signaling, transcriptional imaging for the immediate-early gene "Arc" was used in…

There is a growing body of evidence that the hippocampus is critical for context-dependent memory retrieval. In the present study, we used Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats to examine the role of the dorsal hippocampus (DH) in the context-specific expression of fear memory after extinction (i.e., renewal). Pre-training electrolytic lesions of…

Previous findings indicate that the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the nucleus accumbens (NAc) interact in influencing memory consolidation. The current study investigated whether this interaction requires concurrent dopamine (DA) receptor activation in both brain regions. Unilateral, right-side cannulae were implanted into the BLA and the…

There is now accumulating evidence that the striatal complex in its two major components, the dorsal striatum and the nucleus accumbens, contributes to spatial memory. However, the possibility that different striatal subregions might modulate specific aspects of spatial navigation has not been completely elucidated. Therefore, in this study, two…

Although 9-month-old infants are capable of retaining temporally ordered information over long delays, this ability is relatively fragile. It may be possible to facilitate long-term retention by allowing infants to imitate event sequences immediately after their presentation. The effects of imitation on immediate and delayed recognition and on…

The purposes of this research were to examine the developmental relation between reality monitoring and episodic memory, to link reality monitoring to autobiographical memory by using extended naturalistic events, and to examine prefrontal functioning as a potential contributor to development in reality monitoring and episodic memory. In…

Memory for the position of a moving target is often displaced in the direction of anticipated motion, and this has been referred to as "representational momentum". Such displacement might aid spatial localization by bridging the gap between perception and action, and might reflect a second-order isomorphism between subjective consequences of…

The retention curve for knowledge acquired in a consumer behavior course is explored in a longitudinal study, tracking individual students from 8 to 101 weeks following course completion. Rasch measurement is used to link tests and to achieve intervally scaled measures of knowledge. The findings indicate that most of the knowledge gained in the…

In this article, the author describes a transformation in his perspective which was brought about by a humble familial gesture that evolved into a powerful literacy event--one that caused him to reconsider his beliefs about memory and its role in shaping how each person makes sense of his or her life. As the author reflects on what happened, it…