Search

Chemotherapeutic agents are widely used to treat patients with systemic cancer. The efficacy of these therapies is undermined by their adverse side-effect profiles such as cognitive deficits that have a negative impact on the quality of life of cancer survivors. Cognitive side effects occur across a variety of domains, including memory, executive function, and processing speed. Such impairments are exacerbated under cognitive challenges and a subgroup of patients experience long-term impairments. Episodic memory in rats can be examined using a source memory task. In the current study, rats received paclitaxel, a taxane-derived chemotherapeutic agent, and learning and memory functioning was examined using the source memory task. Treatment with paclitaxel did not impair spatial and episodic memory, and paclitaxel treated rats were not more susceptible to cognitive challenges. Under conditions in which memory was not impaired, paclitaxel treatment impaired learning of new rules, documenting a decreased sensitivity to changes in experimental contingencies. These findings provide new information on the nature of cancer chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairments, particularly regarding the incongruent vulnerability of episodic memory and new learning following treatment with paclitaxel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extinction of fear to a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus (CS) is known to be context-specific. When the CS is tested outside the context of extinction, fear returns, or renews. Several studies have demonstrated that renewal depends upon the hippocampus, although there are also studies where renewal was not impacted by hippocampal damage, suggesting that under some conditions context encoding and/or retrieval of extinction depends upon other regions. One candidate region is the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), which is known to contribute to contextual and spatial learning and memory. Using a conditioned-suppression paradigm, Experiment 1 tested the impact of pre-training RSC lesions on renewal of extinguished fear. Consistent with previous studies, lesions of the RSC did not impact acquisition or extinction of conditioned fear to the CS. Further, there was no evidence that RSC lesions impaired renewal, indicating that contextual encoding and/or retrieval of extinction does not depend upon the RSC. In Experiment 2, post-extinction lesions of either the RSC or dorsal hippocampus (DH) also had no impact on renewal. However, in Experiment 3, both RSC and DH lesions did impair performance in an object-in-place procedure, an index of place memory. RSC and DH contributions to extinction and renewal are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested whether learning the mapping between objects and their locations is better when actively moving the hand to these locations, to reveal the object, compared to when the hand is passively moved by a robotic manipulandum. Recall of object locations was more accurate in the active compared to passive condition. We also found that recall was less accurate when participant made active movements that were not directed to the object locations. These results indicate that the well-established active exploration advantage for spatial memory extends to location memory for objects within reach. Such active learning is likely important for manipulation tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The hippocampal formation is essential for the processing of episodic memories for autobiographical events that happen in unique spatiotemporal contexts. Interestingly, before 2 years of age, children are unable to form or store episodic memories for recall later in life, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia. From 2 to 7 years of age, there are fewer memories than predicted based on a forgetting function alone, a phenomenon known as childhood amnesia. Here, we discuss the postnatal maturation of the primate hippocampal formation with the goal of characterizing the development of the neurobiological substrates thought to subserve the emergence of episodic memory. Distinct regions, layers and cells of the hippocampal formation exhibit different profiles of structural and molecular development during early postnatal life. The protracted period of neuronal addition and maturation in the dentate gyrus is accompanied by the late maturation of specific layers in different hippocampal regions that are located downstream from the dentate gyrus, particularly CA3. In contrast, distinct layers in several hippocampal regions, particularly CA1, which receive direct projections from the entorhinal cortex, exhibit an early maturation. In addition, hippocampal regions that are more highly interconnected with subcortical structures, including the subiculum, presubiculum, parasubiculum and CA2, mature even earlier. These findings, together with our studies of the development of human spatial memory, support the hypothesis that the differential maturation of distinct hippocampal circuits might underlie the differential emergence of specific “hippocampus-dependent” memory processes, culminating in the emergence of episodic memory concomitant with the maturation of all hippocampal circuits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] Both LTP and LTD are facilitated by novel spatial learning. [•] Learning-facilitated LTD is prevented by inhibition of gene transcription. [•] LTD and learning are both prevented by suppressing the immediate early gene c-fos. [•] These data support a role for LTD in the mechanisms underlying spatial learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Paradoxical sleep deprivation (PSD) may alter subsequent learning and memory capacity. There are differences in both the intensity and direction of responses of the male and female species to the same environmental stimuli and experimental conditions. In the present study, we examined the extent of the effects of PSD for 72h on spatial learning and memory, anxiety-like behavior, corticosterone levels, and the body weight in male as well as in intact and ovariectomized (OVX) female Wistar rats. Multiple platform method was used for PSD induction. Spatial learning and memory and anxiety-like behavior were determined using Morris water maze (MWM) task and open field test, respectively. The data showed that PSD could not significantly affect subsequent spatial learning and short-term memory in male rats, while it significantly impaired the performance of the intact and OVX female rats. The PSD-intact and -OVX female rats showed more memory impairment than the PSD-male animals. Those impairments do not appear to be due to elevated stress level, since the plasma corticosterone did not significantly change following PSD induction. The open field data showed that PSD significantly reduced anxiety-like behavior in all experimental groups. In addition, PSD had a reducing effect on the mean body weight of female groups. Such results suggest that the female rats are more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of sleep loss on cognitive performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Lai et al. [Lai H, Horita A, Guy AW. Microwave irradiation affects radial-arm maze performance in the rat. Bioelectromagnetics 1994;15(2):95–104] reported that exposure of rats to pulsed 2.45GHz microwaves altered maze performance. Their maze was bordered by 20cm high opaque walls. Using a maze test based on unrestrained access to spatial cues (no walls), we could not replicate this result [Cassel JC, Cosquer B, Galani R, Kuster N. Whole-body exposure to 2.45GHz electromagnetic fields does not alter radial-maze performance in rats. Behav Brain Res 2004;155:37–43]. Here, we attempted another replication using a maze apparatus bordered by 30cm high opaque walls. Performance of exposed rats was normal. These results show that microwave exposure as used herein does not alter spatial working memory, when access to spatial cues is reduced. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]