Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Lisa Guizzardi | Email: lisa.guizzardi@gmail.com
Lisa Guizzardi 1°, Eliana Ruetti 1°, Nicolás Fernández Larrosa 1°2°, Francisco Javier Maza 1°, Alejandro Delorenzi 1°2°
1° Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIBYNE-UBA-CONICET), Ciudad Universitaria, Pabellón IFIBYNE, Argentina.
2° Departamento de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Celular, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Argentina.
Predicting whether a specific stressor facilitates, strengthens, or interrupts a particular phase of memory is not a simple task. Unlike theories centered around positively or negatively modulating memory strength during different phases of the process, our working hypothesis postulates that the interplay between internal states (emotions) and mnemonic traces when memories are labile plays a crucial role in the behavioral expression of reactivated memories. During consolidation and reconsolidation, changes in concurrent internal states create emotional traces that will also unfold during memory reactivation and thus modulate its expression in testing sessions. Recent findings have already provided evidence for this hypothesis (Maza et al., 2023; Sánchez Beisel et al., 2022); for instance, a mild stressor (cold pressor stress, CPS) administered specifically during reconsolidation a) increased arousal during the testing session and b) jointly impaired the long-term expression of a verbal declarative memory (RAVLT), a list of 15 neutral nouns. In this study, we present the results of a paradigm designed to assess whether inducing a high-arousal emotional state (using IAPS images) is a sufficient condition to negatively modulate the expression of this neutral verbal memory.