One of the molecular events associated with contextual long-term memory (LTM) formation is the induction of cyclic AMP response element (CRE)-mediated transcription1. Here we report that activation of NMDA receptors and of extracellular signal−regulated kinase (ERK) were necessary for stimulation of CRE-mediated transcription during contextual fear conditioning. In addition, we found that inhibition of CRE-regulated transcription during learning blocked LTM, which indicates that this transcriptional activity is critical for memory formation.
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