Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Juan Cruz Beron | Email: juanberon1991@gmail.com
Juan Cruz Beron 1°2°, Rodrigo Sebastián Fernández 1°2°, Maria Eugenia Pedreira 1°2°
1° Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIBYNE)- CONICET, Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2° Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Memory reconsolidation is the mechanism by which consolidated memories are updated in strength and/or content. An underlying hypothesis to these findings suggests that reconsolidation would be reactivation specific, implying that only the reactivated elements would be susceptible to modifications. Our main goal was to study the extent of the strengthening due to reconsolidation, that is, to see whether it affects not reactivated elements. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a 3-day study. On day-1, subjects learned face-name pairs (target memory) along with the interleaved presentation of common use objects (peripheric elements). Subjects were instructed to learn the face-name pairs (target memory) and between these presentations they were asked to make a judgment call on a certain aspect of the object shown. On day-2 two types of reminders of the target memory were used. The group called RI received a reminder with prediction error that leads to reconsolidation, and the other group, RC, received a reminder without prediction error that doesnt involve reconsolidation. On day-3 both the target and peripheric elements of the memory were evaluated. In accordance with previous experiments, the memory for target elements was strengthened in group RI, but not in RC. Here we found that the RI group also showed better recognition of the new objects (peripheric memory) than the RX group and also showed greater sensitivity at discriminating between conditions.