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Learning and memory

Cease or persist?

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 9, pages 248–249 (2008)Cite this article

Infusion of the protein-synthesis inhibitor anisomycin into the dorsal hippocampus of rats 12 hours after training is known to selectively abrogate the persistence phase of LTM formation: rats that undergo this treatment exhibit consolidated memory of the training after 2 days but the memories do not persist for 7 days. The authors used an inhibitory–avoidance protocol to determine the effect of hippocampal delivery of human recombinant BDNF (hrBDNF) on this deficit. They found that delivery of hrBDNF 15 minutes after anisomycin infusion completely rescued the memory impairment: whereas rats treated with anisomycin alone exhibited reduced latency in encroaching onto a region which they had been trained to associate with an electrical footshock, rats that were also treated with hrBDNF exhibited normal latency.

To reinforce their findings, the authors investigated the interplay between BDNF and the strength of the applied footshock. Stronger footshocks are known to induce longer-lasting memories. The authors found that a strong footshock that induced LTM formation increased BDNF expression in the dorsal hippocampus, whereas a footshock too weak to induce LTM formation did not. Significantly, infusion of hrBDNF 12 hours after delivery of a weak footshock resulted in the formation of a persistent LTM.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Bekinschtein, P. et al. BDNF is essential to promote persistence of long-term memory storage. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 2711–2716 (2008)

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  1. Craig Nicholson
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Nicholson, C. Cease or persist?. Nat Rev Neurosci 9, 248–249 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2354

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2354

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