Volume 16 Issue 6, June 2011

Micrographs of human calcyon antibody staining (magenta) in the CA1 region of hippocampus of adult CalOE, tTA control as well as adult CalOE mice with the human calcyon trasngene silenced during adolescence (postnatal day 28–49) (nuclei are in blue). The cartoon in the center summarizes the performance of the mice on a delayed match to sample or ‘working memory’ task in the Morris water maze. The open circle represents the starting area, whereas the white filled circle shows the site of the escape platform during the current trial. The routes taken by CalOE and control mice in swimming to the escape platform are shown in red and yellow, respectively, and in green for the CalOE mice with the transgene silenced during adolescence. The black filled circle corresponds to the site of the escape platform used one week earlier for testing ‘reference memory.’ While their reference memory is unimpaired, during working memory trials, adult CalOE mice show a greater tendency to revisit a previously reinforced location compared to either control mice or CalOE mice with the transgene silenced in adolescence. For more info on this topic, please refer to the article by Vazdarjanova et al on pages 672–684.