Friday, April 12, 2013

Do the learning and retrieval of a memory activate the same neurons? Mayford- August 2007

*Dox: Doxycycline is used in "Tet-on" and "Tet-off" tetracycline-controlled transcriptional activation to regulate transgene expression in organisms and cell cultures.
*tau- LacZ (LAC): Marker genes to trace neuronal activity during learning (c-Fos in this paper)
*Zif/Egr (ZIF): An immediate early gene; as a neuronal activity indicator during retrieval
*Teto: A promoter
A transgenic mouse, TetTag: tTA (tetracycline transactivator system) linked to the c-fos promoter. 
Dox was used to preserve the c-Fos+ cells activity during the FC training until the retrieval, since they cut off the DOX to visualize those activated cells- as well as- capturing the ZIF+ cells shortly after the test. 

12% of neurons tagged with LAC were
reactivated during retrieval. 
The non-reactivated cells were not specific 
to the CS-US training. They think the reactivated neurons could be the possible component of a stable engram or memory trace for conditioned fear.
There was no correlation between the estimated freezing during tone retrieval and the number of reactivated neurons in the BLA. However, the number of reactivated neurons in the lateral amygdala (LA) correlated with the estimated freezing during tone retrieval but did not correlate with the freezing during context retrieval  

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