Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Candela Medina Medina | email: candela.eme@gmail.com
Candela Medina 1°, María C Krawczyk 1°, Ojea Ramos Santiago 2°, Millán Julieta 1°, Mariano G Blake 3°, Mariano M Boccia 1°
1° Laboratorio de Neurofarmacología de Procesos de Memoria, Cátedra de Farmacología, Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica UBA
2° Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIBYNE), UBA-CONICET
3° Instituto de Fisiología y Biofísica (IFIBIO UBA-CONICET), Facultad de Medicina UBA
The claustrum is a highly conserved but enigmatic cerebral structure, since little is known about its cytoarchitecture, neural circuits, function and physiology. Recent studies report projections between claustrum and the entire cortical mantle, together with subcortical regions. This densely connected structure is thought to be involved in several cognitive functions, such as regulation of sleep, attention, stimuli salience processing and neural mechanisms of consciousness. Be that as it may, few studies evaluate the participation of this structure in learning and memory processes, despite requiring most of the aforementioned mechanisms. Our working hypothesis is that neural activity of the claustrum partakes in the formation and stabilization of a long-term memory. Preliminary results show that administering Lidocaine immediately after training session or memory reactivation induces an impairment in the animals behavioral performance in an inhibitory avoidance task. On top of that, a similar effect was evidenced in their performance in a hole-board test, which entails different motivational, sensorial and motor requirements than an aversive task. Future directions of this project include evaluation of the role of the cholinergic system in these mnemonic processes within the claustrum, studying both the modulatory input of acetylcholine and the cholinergic output that projects to other subcortical regions relevant to memory formation.