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The importance of the hippocampus in spatial learning is well established, but the precise relative contributions by the dorsal (septal) and ventral (temporal) subregions remain unresolved. One debate revolves around the extent to which the ventral hippocampus contributes to spatial navigation and learning. Here, separate small subtotal lesions of dorsal hippocampus or ventral hippocampus alone (destroying 18.9 and 28.5% of total hippocampal volume, respectively) spared reference memory acquisition in the water maze. By contrast, combining the two subtotal lesions significantly reduced the rate of acquisition across days. This constitutes evidence for synergistic integration between dorsal and ventral hippocampus in mice. Evidence that ventral hippocampus contributes to spatial/navigation learning also emerged early on during the retention probe test as search preference was reduced in mice with ventral lesions alone or combined lesions. The small ventral lesions also led to anxiolysis in the elevated plus maze and over-generalization of the conditioned freezing response to a neutral context. Similar effects of comparable magnitudes were seen in mice with combined lesions, suggesting that they were largely due to the small ventral damage. By contrast, small dorsal lesions were uniquely associated with a severe spatial working memory deficit in the water maze. Taken together, both dorsal and ventral poles of the hippocampus contribute to efficient spatial navigation in mice: While the integrity of dorsal hippocampus is necessary for spatial working memory, the acquisition and retrieval of spatial reference memory are modulated by the ventral hippocampus. Although the impairments following ventral damage (alone or in combination with dorsal damage) were less substantial, a wider spectrum of spatial learning, including context conditioning, was implicated. Our results encourage the search for integrative mechanism between dorsal and ventral hippocampus in spatial learning. Candidate neural substrates may include dorsoventral longitudinal connections and reciprocal modulation via overlapping polysynaptic networks beyond hippocampus.

Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 15 (4), ISSN:1530-7026, ISSN:1531-135X

Rationale: Pre-exposure to either one of the two to-be-associated stimuli alone is known to reduce the efficiency of the learning of their association when they are subsequently paired explicitly. In classical conditioning, pre-exposure to the conditioned stimulus (CS) gives rise to latent inhibition (LI); and pre-exposure to the unconditioned stimulus (US) results in the US pre-exposure effect (USPEE). Considerable evidence supports an important role of central dopamine in the regulation and modulation of LI; it has been suggested that the USPEE may be similarly controlled by dopamine, but this parallelism has only been directly demonstrated in the conditioned taste aversion paradigm. Objective: The present study tested this hypothesis by comparing the efficacy of systemic amphetamine treatment to affect the expression of LI and the USPEE in a two-way active avoidance paradigm. Methods: C57BL/6 male mice were tested in active avoidance using a tone CS and a foot-shock US. Twenty-four hours before, they were pre-exposed to 100 presentations of the CS or the US, or to the test apparatus only. Amphetamine (2.5mg/kg) or saline was administered before stimulus pre-exposure and conditioned avoidance test, in which the mice learned to avoid the shock by shuttling in response to the tone. Results: Amphetamine disrupted both stimulus pre-exposure effects, thus, lending further support to the hypothesis that the USPEE is similar to LI in its sensitivity to dopamine receptor agonist. Hence, the USPEE paradigm may represent a valuable addition to the study of dopamine-sensitive processes of selective learning currently implicated in LI and Kamin blocking

Psychopharmacology, 179 (1), ISSN:0033-3158, ISSN:1432-2072

The water maze is one of the most widely employed spatial learning paradigms in the cognitive profiling of genetically modified mice. Oftentimes, tests of reference memory (RM) and working memory (WM) in the water maze are sequentially evaluated in the same animals. However, critical difference in the rules governing efficient escape from the water between WM and RM tests is expected to promote the adoption of incompatible mnemonic or navigational strategies. Hence, performance in a given test is likely poorer if it follows the other test instead of being conducted first. Yet, the presence of such negative transfer effects (or proactive interference) between WM and RM training in the water maze is often overlooked in the literature. To gauge whether this constitutes a serious concern, the present study determined empirically the magnitude, persistence, and directionality of the transfer effect in wild-type C57BL/6 mice. We contrasted the order of tests between two cohorts of mice. Performance between the two cohorts in the WM and RM tests were then separately compared. We showed that prior training of either test significantly reduced performance in the subsequent one. The statistical effect sizes in both directions were moderate to large. Although extended training could overcome the deficit, it could re-emerge later albeit in a more transient fashion. Whenever RM and WM water maze tests are conducted sequentially in the same animals – regardless of the test order, extra caution is necessary when interpreting the outcomes in the second test. Counterbalancing test orders between animals is recommended. Fil: Serrano Sponton, Lucas Ezequiel. Mainz University Hospital. Department of Neurosurger; Alemania. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina Fil: Soria, Gonzalo Jose. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina Fil: Dubroqua, Sylvain. Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science; China. Laboratory of Behavioural Neurobiology; Suiza Fil: Singer, Philipp. Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science; China. Roche Diagnostics; Suiza Fil: Feldon, Joram. Laboratory of Behavioural Neurobiology; Suiza. Roche Diagnostics; Suiza Fil: Gargiulo, Pascual Angel. Universidad Nacional de cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; Argentina Fil: Yee, Benjamin K.. Laboratory of Behavioural Neurobiology; Suiza. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Faculty of Health and Social Sciences,; China

Overshadowing (Experiment 1) and blocking (Experiment 2) were investigated using a conditioned suppression paradigm in rats. Neither hippocampectomy nor cortical control lesions affected the extent to which a salient stimulus overshadowed a less salient one. Nor did the lesions affect the extent to which a stimulus that was highly correlated with shock overshadow a stimulus that was less well correlated with shock. Finally, the lesions did not alter the extent to which a previously reinforced stimulus blocked conditioning to another stimulus when both were presented as a reinforced compound stimulus. It is thus possible for hippocampectomized rats to show apparently normal overshadowing and blocking, at least under some testing conditions.

Experiment I assessed the effect of cytotoxic retrohippocampal (entorhinal and extra-subicular cortices) lesions on the development of latent inhibition (LI) using an off-the-baseline, between-subjects, conditioned emotional response paradigm. Sham-operated controls and unoperated rats that had been pre-exposed to a light stimulus prior to light-shock pairings showed less conditioned suppression towards the light stimulus than the nonpre-exposed animals, thus demonstrating LI. However, LI was not evident in rats with retrohippocampal lesions. In experiment 2, the same animals were trained to run in an straight runway for food. Half of the animals were trained under a 50% partial reinforcement schedule (i.e. they were rewarded randomly on half of the acquisition trials) and the other half were trained under a continuous reinforcement schedule (i.e. they were rewarded on every acquisition trial). When tested in extinction, animals trained on the partial reinforcement schedule showed greater persistence than animals trained on continuous reinforcement, thus demonstrating the partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE). Rats with retrohippocampal lesions showed a PREE that was at least as clear as that seen in the sham-operated controls and in the unoperated animals. It is concluded that cytotoxic lesions of the retrohippocampal region selectively led to an abolition of LI, but spared the PREE. The present study thus provided evidence against the hypothesis that LI and the PREE share a common neural substrate.

Neural Plasticity, 2017, ISSN:2090-5904, ISSN:1687-5443

Neurotransmitter receptor density is a major variable in regulating synaptic strength. Receptors rapidly exchange between synapses and intracellular storage pools through endocytic recycling. In addition, lateral diffusion and confinement exchanges surface membrane receptors between synaptic and extrasynaptic sites. However, the signals that regulate this transition are currently unknown. GABAA receptors containing α5-subunits (GABAAR-α5) concentrate extrasynaptically through radixin (Rdx)-mediated anchorage at the actin cytoskeleton. Here we report a novel mechanism that regulates adjustable plasma membrane receptor pools in the control of synaptic receptor density. RhoA/ROCK signalling regulates an activity-dependent Rdx phosphorylation switch that uncouples GABAAR-α5 from its extrasynaptic anchor, thereby enriching synaptic receptor numbers. Thus, the unphosphorylated form of Rdx alters mIPSCs. Rdx gene knockout impairs reversal learning and short-term memory, and Rdx phosphorylation in wild-type mice exhibits experience-dependent changes when exposed to novel environments. Our data suggest an additional mode of synaptic plasticity, in which extrasynaptic receptor reservoirs supply synaptic GABAARs., Nature Communications, 6, ISSN:2041-1723