Re-thinking roles of hippocampus in systems consolidation

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26640014
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Neurophysiology / General neuroscience
• Research Institution: Tokyo University of Agriculture
• Principal Investigator: KIDA SATOSHI 東京農業大学, 応用生物科学部, 教授 (80301547)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 脳・神経 / 神経科学 / 記憶制御 / 海馬 / 記憶固定化 / 記憶再固定化

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Previous studies have suggested that the hippocampus-dependent memory becomes hippocampus-independent with time through systems consolidation. In this study, we investigated roles of hippocampus in regulation of remote contextual fear memory by comparing previous findings. We found that long, but not short time recall of remote memory activates gene expression in the hippocampus and induces hippocampus-dependent reconsolidation and that remote memory retrieval becomes hippocampus-dependent after the long time recall. We also suggest that the long time recall enables to discriminate differences of context even when memory is remote. These findings suggest that remote fear memory returns to a hippocampus dependent state after long time recall through reactivation of hippocampus.

Free Research Field

分子神経科学