Incidental memory can be challenged by increasing either the retention delay or the memory load. The dorsal hippocampus (dHP) appears to help with both consolidation from short-term (STM) to long-term memory (LTM), and higher memory loads, but the mechanism is not fully understood. Here we find that female mice, despite having the same STM capacity of 6 objects and higher resistance to distraction in our different object recognition task (DOT), when tested over 1 h or 24 h delays appear to transfer to LTM only 4 objects, whereas male mice have an STM capacity of 6 objects in this task. In male mice the dHP shows greater activation (as measured by c-Fos expression), whereas female mice show greater activation of the ventral midline thalamus (VMT). Optogenetic inhibition of the VMT-dHP pathway during off-line memory consolidation enables 6-object LTM retention in females, while chemogenetic VMT-activation impairs it in males. Thus, removing or enhancing sub-cortical inhibitory control over the hippocampus leads to differences in incidental memory.

Thalamo-hippocampal pathway regulates incidental memory capacity in mice / Torromino, Giulia; Loffredo, Vittorio; Cavezza, Davide; Sonsini, Gregorio; Esposito, Fabrizio; Crevenna, Alvaro; Gioffrè, Mariano; De Risi, Maria; Treves, Alessandro; Griguoli, Marilena; De Leonibus, Elvira. - In: NATURE COMMUNICATIONS. - ISSN 2041-1723. - 13:1(2022), pp. 1-14. [10.1038/s41467-022-31781-8]

Thalamo-hippocampal pathway regulates incidental memory capacity in mice

Alessandro Treves;Marilena Griguoli;Elvira De Leonibus
2022-01-01

Abstract

Incidental memory can be challenged by increasing either the retention delay or the memory load. The dorsal hippocampus (dHP) appears to help with both consolidation from short-term (STM) to long-term memory (LTM), and higher memory loads, but the mechanism is not fully understood. Here we find that female mice, despite having the same STM capacity of 6 objects and higher resistance to distraction in our different object recognition task (DOT), when tested over 1 h or 24 h delays appear to transfer to LTM only 4 objects, whereas male mice have an STM capacity of 6 objects in this task. In male mice the dHP shows greater activation (as measured by c-Fos expression), whereas female mice show greater activation of the ventral midline thalamus (VMT). Optogenetic inhibition of the VMT-dHP pathway during off-line memory consolidation enables 6-object LTM retention in females, while chemogenetic VMT-activation impairs it in males. Thus, removing or enhancing sub-cortical inhibitory control over the hippocampus leads to differences in incidental memory.
2022
13
1
1
14
4194
10.1038/s41467-022-31781-8
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31781-8
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.07.453742v3.abstract
Torromino, Giulia; Loffredo, Vittorio; Cavezza, Davide; Sonsini, Gregorio; Esposito, Fabrizio; Crevenna, Alvaro; Gioffrè, Mariano; De Risi, Maria; Treves, Alessandro; Griguoli, Marilena; De Leonibus, Elvira
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11767/132391
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