Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Francisco Javier Maza | email: fjmaza@fbmc.fcen.uba.ar
Francisco Javier Maza 1°, Francisco José Urbano 1°2°, Alejandro Delorenzi 1°2°
1° IFIBYNE, UBA-CONICET, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2° Departamento de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Celular, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Emotional (internal) states can modulate memory retrieval, or the expression of reactivated memories. Although the subjective evaluation of emotions is not possible in non-human animals, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological studies suggest they display emotion-compatible states. According to the Affective Extension of Sometimes Opponent Processes (AESOP) model, emotive components triggered by unconditioned stimuli are critical modulators of the behavioral responses elicited by the reactivation of the sensory component of memory traces. In N. granulata, a visual danger stimulus (VDS) passing over their horizon induces an escape response. With the repeated presentations of VDS, animals change their behavior in the short and long term from an escape to an immobilizing response. Here, in a first step to evaluate the role of emotional states in memory expression in this paradigm, we evaluate crabs anxiety-like behavior in a light/dark maze after a strong VDS training (15 trials). We found that, immediately after training, crabs spent more time in the dark zones than both untrained and naïve crabs. This result suggests that strong training induces a change in the emotional state. We propose that, according to the AESOP model, this internal state links with the memory trace, and that the unfolding of this internal state modulates the memory behavioral expression.