Two functional components of the hippocampal memory system

Entorhinal cortex lesions disrupt the transition between the use of intra- and extramaze cues for navigation in the water maze

This study with rats examined the effects of excitotoxic lesions to the entorhinal cortex (EC) and hippocampus (HPC) on using extramaze and intramaze cues to navigate to a hidden platform in a water maze. HPC lesions resulted in a disruption to the use of extramaze cues, but not intramaze cues, whereas EC lesions had no effect on the use of these cues when they were encountered for the first time. However, prior navigation training in which 1 type of cue was relevant disrupted navigation with the other type in rats with EC lesions. Results show that the EC contributes to the processing of spatial information, but that this contribution is most apparent when there is a conflict between 2 sources of navigational cues in the water maze.

Source versus content memory in patients with a unilateral frontal cortex or a temporal lobe excision

It has been suggested previously that patients with a frontal lobe lesion might have a specific impairment in the retrieval of the source of information despite adequate memory for facts. Patients with an anterior temporal excision are known to have impairments in memory for facts and the question arises as to whether they are also impaired in source memory. The present study compared memory for facts and their source in patients with a unilateral frontal cortical or an anterior temporal excision in a situation in which both types of information were encoded explicitly. Patients with a unilateral frontal cortex or a temporal lobe excision watched videos of a game show and were instructed to attend to both the trivia facts and their source (the identity of the speaker or the relative time of presentation). Patients with a frontal cortex excision were not impaired on either fact or source memory. This was true even when a subgroup of patients with an excision involving the dorsolateral frontal cortex was examined. In contrast, patients with a left temporal lobe excision were impaired in both fact and identity source memory and right temporal lobe patients were impaired in identity source memory. All patients performed similarly to normal controls in temporal source memory. The present results are consistent with the view that source information is part of an associative network of information about an episode and that the medial temporal region is critical for both source and content memory. Furthermore, if source information is encoded explicitly, the frontal cortex does not appear to be necessary for its retrieval. Instead, it is proposed that the frontal cortex plays a metacognitive role in memory retrieval.

Selective impairment of fornix-transected rats on a new nonspatial, odor-guided task

In the present experiment, sham-operated (SH) and fornix-transected (FX) rats were trained on a new nonspatial, odor-guided task. On each session, eight odor pairs were presented twice. On the first occurrence of a pair, rats were reinforced for pushing the container (go response) in which the olfactory stimuli were placed. On the second occurrence, they were not reinforced and had to refrain from responding (no-go response) to be scored as success. Rats were first trained to criterion on odor pairs made of replicates of the same odor (S pairs). Then they were trained to criterion on pairs made of different odors, each member of the pair overlapping with that of another pair (O pairs) and finally, on pairs of different odors with no overlap (NO pairs). The results showed that the number of sessions to reach criterion was significantly higher in FX than in SH rats during training on O pairs, but not during training on S or on NO pairs. These findings are consistent with the configural (Rudy and Sutherland, 1995: Hippocampus 5:375-389) or relational (Eichenbaum et al., 1994: Behav Brain Sci 17:449-518) account of the hippocampal memory function.

Facilitating acquisition and transfer of a continuous motor task in healthy older adults and patients with Alzheimer's disease

This study examined the acquisition and transfer of a fine motor skill, namely the rotary pursuit, in 99 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 100 normal controls (NCs). To identify optimal learning strategies, the authors had participants practice the rotary pursuit under constant, blocked, random, or no training conditions. Transfer was assessed using speeds that were different from those practiced during acquisition. AD patients and NCs receiving constant practice outperformed their peers in the blocked and random conditions during acquisition. Whereas all 3 types of practice facilitated transfer in the NCs, AD patients only benefited from constant practice. The inability of the AD patients to benefit from variable practice suggests that these individuals may have difficulty accessing and/or forming motor schemas.

Separate processing mechanisms for encoding of geometric and landmark information in the avian hippocampus

Domestic chicks bilaterally or unilaterally lesioned to the hippocampus were trained to search for food hidden beneath sawdust by ground-scratching in the centre of a large enclosure, the correct position of food being indicated by a local landmark in the absence of any extra-enclosure visual cues. At test, the landmark was removed or displaced at a distance from its original position. Results showed that sham-operated chicks and chicks with a lesion of the left hippocampus searched in the centre, relying on large-scale geometric information provided by the enclosure, whereas chicks with a lesion of either the right hippocampus or both hippocampi were completely disoriented (landmark removed) or searched close to the landmark shifted from the centre (landmark displaced). These results indicate that encoding of geometric features of an enclosure occurs in the right hippocampus even when local information provided by a landmark would suffice to localize the goal; encoding based on local information, in contrast, seems to occur outside the hippocampus. These findings provide evidence that the left and right avian hippocampi play different roles in spatial cognition, a phenomenon which had been documented previously only for the human hippocampus.

Olfactory learning and memory impairments following lesions to the hippocampus and perirhinal-entorhinal cortex

The role of the hippocampus and perirhinal-entorhinal cortex was examined in an olfactory discrimination paradigm. Small neurotoxic lesions of the hippocampus (21% tissue damage) yielded relatively unimpaired olfactory retention across brief (30 s), intermediate (approximately 5 min), and 24-hr delays, whereas impairments were noted at 5-day retention intervals. Larger hippocampal lesions (63% tissue damage) spared memory at intermediate delays, with no impact at 8-day retention intervals. Aspiration lesions directed at the perirhinal-entorhinal cortex produced a variable performance pattern, with impairments noted at intermediate, 24-hr, and 5-day delays. Results suggest the hippocampus is not specifically involved in retaining olfactory information, with additional consideration given to the relationship between lesion size and memory impairment.

Differential contributions of the parahippocampal place area and the anterior hippocampus to human memory for scenes

Past neuroimaging research has identified a parahippocampal place area (PPA) in the posterior medial temporal lobe (MTL), which responds preferentially to visual scenes and plays a role in episodic memory for this class of stimuli. In the present positron emission tomography study, we examined to what extent the functional characteristics of the PPA resemble those of other, more anterior MTL regions across various learning and recognition-memory tasks. We also determined whether the involvement of the PPA in recognition of previously studied scenes is specific to a particular type of scene information. We found that, like the PPA, anterior hippocampal regions showed a novelty response (higher activation for novel than repeated scenes) and a stimulus-related response (higher activation for scenes than objects) during learning, indicating that MTL structures other than the PPA contribute to the encoding of novel stimulus relationships in scenes. However, these anterior hippocampal regions showed no involvement during recognition of either spatial or nonspatial information contained in scenes. The PPA, by contrast, was consistently involved in recognition of all types of scene details, presumably through interactions with co-activated parietal and occipitotemporal cortices. We suggest that MTL contributions from the PPA are sufficient to support recognition of scenes when the task can be based on a perceptually based familiarity process.

Role of medial temporal lobe in extensive retrieval of task-related knowledge

The role of medial temporal lobe (MTL) in deep semantic processing was examined in a triple semantic judgment task in which subjects were asked to decide which one of the two bottom words was more semantically fit to the top word. By changing the number of bottom words that are semantically related to the top word, we can disassociate effects of reactivating the "old" semantic associations and effects of establishing "new" semantic associations on the MTL. The results of event-related fMRI analysis indicated that MTL was more activated in the retrieval of old semantic associations than in the establishment of new semantic associations. The function of MTL in this semantic judgment task was explained as subserving the process of extensive retrieval of task-related knowledge.

Ventral hippocampal lesions affect anxiety but not spatial learning

Rats with cytotoxic ventral hippocampal lesions which removed approximately 50% of the hippocampus (including dentate gyrus) starting from the temporal pole, displayed a reduction in freezing behaviour following the delivery of an unsignalled footshock in an operant chamber. This was more plausibly a result of reduced susceptibility to fear than a result of a lesion-induced increase in general motor activity. There was no consistent difference between sham and lesioned animals in spontaneous locomotor activity, or locomotion following acute or chronic treatment with amphetamine. In contrast, ventral hippocampal lesioned animals were quicker to pass from the black to the white box during a modified version of the light/dark exploration test, and were quicker to begin eating during tests of hyponeophagia. Furthermore, rats with ventral hippocampal lesions defecated less than their sham counterparts both during open field testing and in extinction sessions following contextual conditioning. In contrast to these clear lesion effects, there were no signs of any spatial learning impairment either in the watermaze or on the elevated T-maze. Taken together these results suggest that the ventral hippocampus may play a role in a brain system (or systems) associated with fear and/or anxiety, and provide further evidence for a distinct specialisation of function along the septotemporal axis of the hippocampus.

Hippocampal atrophy disrupts transfer generalization in nondemented elderly

Specific reductions in hippocampal volume in nondemented elderly individuals with mild cognitive impairment have been shown to correlate with future development of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Hippocampal atrophy (HA) is also correlated with cognitive impairments, leading to the promise of behavioral markers for early AD. Prior theoretical work has suggested that hippocampal dysfunction may selectively impair generalization involving novel recombinations of familiar stimuli. In this study, nondemented elderly individuals were trained on a series of concurrent visual discriminations and were then tested for transfer when stimulus features were recombined in new ways. Presence or absence of HA, revealed by neuroimaging, was not correlated with concurrent discrimination performance; however, individuals with mild HA showed significant decreases in transfer performance relative to nonatrophied participants. These preliminary results suggest that even very mild degrees of hippocampal atrophy may be associated with subtle behavioral impairments.

Memory traces unbound

The idea that new memories are initially 'labile' and sensitive to disruption before becoming permanently stored in the wiring of the brain has been dogma for >100 years. Recently, we have revisited the hypothesis that reactivation of a consolidated memory can return it to a labile, sensitive state - in which it can be modified, strengthened, changed or even erased! The data generated from some of the best-described paradigms in memory research, in conjunction with powerful neurobiological technologies, have provided striking support for a very dynamic neurobiological basis of memory, which is beginning to overturn the old dogma.

Differential roles of dorsal hippocampal subregions in spatial working memory with short versus intermediate delay

In order to determine the role of subregions of the hippocampus in spatial working memory, this study combined selective neurotoxic lesions of the hippocampal subregions with a simple delayed nonmatching-to-place task on a radial maze in rats. Lesions of the dentate gyrus or the CA3, but not the CA1, subregion of the hippocampus induced a deficit in the acquisition of the task with short-term delays (i.e., 10 sec) and impaired performance of the task in a novel environment. All subregional lesions produced sustained impairment in performing the task with intermediate-term delays (i.e., 5 min) when rats were tested in a familiar environment. The results suggest a dynamic interaction among the dorsal hippocampal subregions in processing spatial working memory, with the time window (i.e., delay) of a task recognized as an essential controlling factor.

Hippocampal damage equally impairs memory for single items and memory for conjunctions

In a prior study of continuous recognition performance, data were reported in support of the hypothesis that the hippocampus is not needed to remember the individual components of a stimulus but is important for remembering associations between its components (Kroll et al. 1996. J Mem Lang 35:176-196). Patients with left hippocampal damage were able to endorse recently encountered words and to reject novel words, as well as disyllabic words in which one of the syllables had been previously encountered. However, they failed to reject words in which both syllables had been encountered independently in different words. We present data from five experiments designed to examine this finding in more detail. In each experiment, five patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and eight controls were tested using the same protocol as Kroll et al. (1996). On each trial, a two-component stimulus was presented. Stimuli could be entirely novel, novel with one previously encountered (repeated) component, novel but with both components repeated, or a true repetition. The first experiment was a direct replication using the same disyllabic words as Kroll et al. (1996). The second experiment used pseudo-words, constructed of two monosyllabic words (e.g., jambark). The third experiment used the same pairs of monosyllabic words, but presented separately on the screen to encourage participants to treat each component independently. The fourth experiment used pairs of objects, and the fifth experiment used face-house pairs. In all five experiments, patients with hippocampal damage exhibited impaired recognition memory. The impairment extended across all trial types with no evidence that hippocampal damage selectively (or disproportionately) impaired the associative or conjunctive component of memory. We discuss our findings in the light of the work by Kroll et al. (1996) and other recent neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies of hippocampal function and single-item and associative memory.

The perirhinal–entorhinal cortex, but not the hippocampus, is critical for expression of individual recognition in the context of the Coolidge effect

The Coolidge effect is a phenomenon in which males show renewed sexual interest in a novel female following copulation to satiety with another female. In golden hamsters, this phenomenon depends on the ability to recognize conspecifics using chemosensory cues processed through the main olfactory system. Here we tested whether olfactory targets in the hippocampal system support this natural form of recognition memory. Male hamsters received ibotenic acid lesions of the perirhinal-entorhinal cortex (PR-ENT) or hippocampus (H) and were allowed to copulate to satiety with a female conspecific, then were presented with two anesthetized females, the familiar mate and an unfamiliar female that copulated with another male. Sham-operated and H-lesioned subjects preferentially investigated the novel female, indicating intact recognition of individual identity. By contrast, PR-ENT-lesioned males failed to discriminate familiar and novel females, and this deficit could not be attributed to abnormal copulatory behavior during mating. All subjects were able to detect and discriminate between female odors when presented in isolation during a habituation-discrimination test, indicating that behavioral deficits shown by PR-ENT males were not due to anosmia or a general investigatory deficit. Thus, the perirhinal-entorhinal cortex, but not the hippocampus, is critical for the recognition of familiar conspecifics in this naturalistic situation. This study reveals an essential role for the perirhinal-entorhinal cortex, but not the hippocampus, in a natural form of recognition memory within the social behavior of hamsters. The findings show a strikingly similar pattern to the effects of selective damage to the same brain regions on performance in standard recognition memory tasks by rats and monkeys. Therefore, the present data extend our understanding of the differential role of structures of the hippocampal memory system, showing continuity across species and between formal laboratory tests and the function of memory in natural social behavior.

Selective cognitive dysfunction in acetylcholine M1 muscarinic receptor mutant mice

Blockade of cholinergic neurotransmission by muscarinic receptor antagonists produces profound deficits in attention and memory. However, the antagonists used in previous studies bind to more than one of the five muscarinic receptor subtypes. Here we examined memory in mice with a null mutation of the gene coding the M1 receptor, the most densely distributed muscarinic receptor in the hippocampus and forebrain. In contrast with previous studies using nonselective pharmacological antagonists, the M1 receptor deletion produced a selective phenotype that included both enhancements and deficits in memory. Long-term potentiation (LTP) in response to theta burst stimulation in the hippocampus was also reduced in mutant mice. M1 null mutant mice showed normal or enhanced memory for tasks that involved matching-to-sample problems, but they were severely impaired in non-matching-to-sample working memory as well as consolidation. Our results suggest that the M1 receptor is specifically involved in memory processes for which the cortex and hippocampus interact.

Dissociating medial temporal and basal ganglia memory systems with a latent learning task

The medial temporal (MT) lobes and basal ganglia have both been implicated as brain substrates of associative learning. Here, we show a dissociation between medial temporal and basal ganglia damage using a latent learning task, in which prior exposure to cues, uncorrelated with each other, slows subsequent learning of an association between them. Consistent with prior work, we found a robust exposure effect in healthy controls, with exposed controls learning more slowly than non-exposed controls. This effect was abolished in medial temporal amnesia: both exposed and non-exposed amnesic patients learned at the same speed. A group of patients with basal ganglia damage due to Parkinson's disease showed a reversal of the effect: exposed subjects learned faster than non-exposed subjects. Our findings point to distinct and dissociable contributions of medial temporal lobe and basal ganglia structures to learning and memory.

Selective impairments in rats on an odor-guided continuous delayed nonmatching-to-sample (cDNMS) task after fornix transection

The two experiments reported in this article examined recognition of simple and complex olfactory stimuli. In Experiment 1, three groups of control rats were trained to criterion without delay then, tested with delays on a continuous delayed nonmatching-to-sample (cDNMS) task using one of three kinds of odor pairs: replicates of the same odor (S), different odors that were each common with another pair (O), different odors with no overlap between pairs (NO). Results showed that initial learning and performance with delays were both poorer for O pairs than for S and NO pairs. Experiment 2 used a within-subject design to study the effects of fornix transection on recognition of the same three kinds of odor pairs as those described for Experiment 1. Sham-operated controls and rats (SH) with fornix transection were trained to criterion prior to the test with delays first on S, then on O and, finally, on NO pairs. During training, numbers of sessions to criterion did not differ in lesioned and SH rats on any of the three kinds of pairs. During testing, the level of performance was delay-dependent in both groups. However, lesioned rats were significantly impaired when tested with S and O pairs, but did not differ from sham-operated controls when tested with NO pairs. This selective impairment can be interpreted as evidence that fornix lesions impair recognition memory of stimuli that provide few and/or confusing retrieval cues. It might also suggest that postlesional performance on DNMS procedures depends on task difficulty.

Hippocampal and neocortical contributions to memory: advances in the complementary learning systems framework

The complementary learning systems framework provides a simple set of principles, derived from converging biological, psychological and computational constraints, for understanding the differential contributions of the neocortex and hippocampus to learning and memory. The central principles are that the neocortex has a low learning rate and uses overlapping distributed representations to extract the general statistical structure of the environment, whereas the hippocampus learns rapidly using separated representations to encode the details of specific events while minimizing interference. In recent years, we have instantiated these principles in working computational models, and have used these models to address human and animal learning and memory findings, across a wide range of domains and paradigms. Here, we review a few representative applications of our models, focusing on two domains: recognition memory and animal learning in the fear-conditioning paradigm. In both domains, the models have generated novel predictions that have been tested and confirmed.

Effects of extensive temporal lobe damage or mild hypoxia on recollection and familiarity

Memory for past events can be based on recollection or on assessments of familiarity. These two forms of human memory have been studied extensively by philosophers and psychologists, but their neuroanatomical substrates are largely unknown. Here we examined the brain regions that are involved in these two forms of memory by studying patients with damage to different temporal lobe regions. Our results come from (i) structural covariance modeling of recall and recognition, (ii) introspective reports during recognition and (iii) analysis of receiver operating characteristics. In sum, we found that the regions disrupted in mild hypoxia, such as the hippocampus, are centrally involved in conscious recollection, whereas the surrounding temporal lobe supports familiarity-based memory discrimination.

Cellular and systems reconsolidation in the hippocampus

Cellular theories of memory consolidation posit that new memories require new protein synthesis in order to be stored. Systems consolidation theories posit that the hippocampus has a time-limited role in memory storage, after which the memory is independent of the hippocampus. Here, we show that intra-hippocampal infusions of the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin caused amnesia for a consolidated hippocampal-dependent contextual fear memory, but only if the memory was reactivated prior to infusion. The effect occurred even if reactivation was delayed for 45 days after training, a time when contextual memory is independent of the hippocampus. Indeed, reactivation of a hippocampus-independent memory caused the trace to again become hippocampus dependent, but only for 2 days rather than for weeks. Thus, hippocampal memories can undergo reconsolidation at both the cellular and systems levels.

Potentiation of muscimol-induced long-term depression by benzodiazepines but not zolpidem

Zolpidem is a rapid-onset, short-duration, quickly eliminated imidazopyridine hypnotic. It has been suggested that zolpidem may produce less memory and cognitive impairment than benzodiazepines (BZs) due to its low binding affinity for BZ receptor subtypes found in areas of the brain that are involved in learning and memory, in particular the hippocampus. A novel protocol for inducing long-term synaptic depression through activation of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA(A)) receptors in the hippocampal slices has been recently reported. The authors used the CA1 region of rat hippocampal slices to compare the effects of classic BZs, which bind equipotently to BZ1 and BZ2 sites, and of nonbenzodiazepine zolpidem, which binds preferentially to the BZ1 sites of GABA(A) receptors, on the GABA(A)-induced long-term depression (LTD), a possible cellular mechanism for their different cognition-impairment profile. Extracellular recordings were made in the CA1 pyramidal cell layer of rat hippocampal slices following orthodromic stimulation of Schaffer collateral fibres in stratum radiatum (0.01 Hz). It was observed that diazepam and cholordiazepoxide at concentrations of 10 and 20 microM, which did not have any effect themselves on the population spike, potentiate the ability of muscimol to induce LTD, whereas zolpidem at concentrations of 10 and 20 microM failed to potentiate muscimol-induced LTD. The results suggest that the potentiation of muscimol-induced LTD by diazepam or chlordiazepoxide and the lack of this effect by zolpidem may explain their different cognition impairment profiles.

Novel factors contributing to the expression of latent inhibition

Behavioral and neural correlates of latent inhibition (LI) during eyeblink conditioning were studied in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) were conditioned after 8 days of tone conditioned stimulus (CS) presentations or 8 days of context-alone experience. LI was seen in the CS-preexposed rabbits when a relatively intense (5 psi) airpuff unconditioned stimulus was paired with the CS. In Experiment 2, rabbits were given 0, 4, or 8 days of CS preexposures or context-alone experience. Hippocampal activity was monitored from the 8-day CS- or context-exposure rabbits. The LI effect was seen only in rabbits given 4 days of CS preexposure, thus suggesting that LI depended largely on the rate of acquisition in the context-preexposed control group. The neural recordings showed that the hippocampus was sensitive to the relative novelty of the stimuli and the overall context, regardless of whether exposure to stimuli and context promoted LI.

Neural correlates of memory for object identity and object location: effects of aging

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of aging on memory for object identity and object location to determine whether aging affects both posterior neocortical areas that are domain-specific and other brain regions, such as pre-frontal cortex, that are involved in encoding and retrieval regardless of the information that is processed (domain-general). We used positron emission tomography (PET) to measure changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in younger and older participants while they were engaged in encoding and retrieving information about object identity and object location. Compared to young adults, older adults showed decreased activation in domain-specific regions of inferior parietal and inferior temporal cortex while engaged in processing (encoding and retrieving) information about object location and object identity, respectively. This decreased specificity in the older adults was accompanied by greater domain-general activation in right prefrontal and premotor cortex during perceptual encoding than during retrieval. Conversely, the younger participants showed greater domain-general activation in right extrastriate cortex (Brodmann area (BA) 18) during retrieval. Moreover, we found that medial temporal and frontal lobes were synergistically activated in younger adults but not in older adults. The pattern of decreased specificity of activation in posterior neocortex with greater activation in anterior neocortex suggests that, with age, compensatory domain-general mechanisms in anterior neocortex are recruited to mitigate altered domain-specific processes. Thus, the results of the present study indicate that the relation between the presumed integrity of various structures, such as the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and posterior neocortex, and their pattern of activation, is a complex one that is influenced by age, by the perceptual and cognitive demands of the task and their interaction.

Dissociating familiarity from recollection in human recognition memory: different rates of forgetting over short retention intervals

Two functionally distinct forms of recognition memory have been identified in human and nonhuman species-the ability to recollect qualitative information about previous events, and the ability to differentiate between familiar and novel stimuli. Separate dual-process theories have been developed in the animal and human literatures to account for these findings. However, it is not clear whether these theories describe the same two underlying memory processes. On the basis of animal studies of medial temporal lobe function, familiarity is expected to exhibit disproportionately fast forgetting compared with recollection over short retention intervals. We tested this prediction in healthy human subjects by examining recognition forgetting rates across a range of 8-32 intervening items and found significant forgetting in the accuracy of familiarity-based discriminations and no evidence of forgetting in the accuracy of recollection-based discriminations. In agreement with the results from nonhuman species, the present results indicate that item familiarity decreases more rapidly than recollection over short retention intervals.

Recognition memory for single items and for associations is similarly impaired following damage to the hippocampal region

The formation of new associations between items is critical for establishing episodic memories. It has been suggested that the hippocampus is essential for creating such associations but is not involved, or is much less involved, in memory for single items. In Experiment 1, we tested controls and amnesic patients with bilateral lesions thought to be limited primarily to the hippocampal region in both single-item and associative recognition memory tasks. In the single-item task, a conventional recognition memory task was administered in which participants studied either houses or faces and were tested for their ability to recognize the individual items. In the associative task, participants studied paired pictures of houses and faces with instructions that encouraged associating the two stimuli, and were tested for their ability to recognize the specific pairings that were presented at study. Like the controls, the amnesic patients performed more poorly on the associative task. Relative to the controls, the amnesic patients were impaired to a similar extent on the single-item and associative tasks. In Experiment 2, the performance of the amnesic patients was improved by increasing the number of presentations of the study lists (eight presentations instead of one). On both the single-item and associative tests, the performance of the amnesic patients after eight presentations was now identical to the performance of the controls who had been given only one presentation of the study list. Thus, the associative condition was not disproportionally difficult for the amnesic patients. These results are consistent with the idea that the hippocampus is similarly involved in single-item and associative memory.

Evidence concerning how neurons of the perirhinal cortex may effect familiarity discrimination

Many studies indicate that recognition memory involves at least two separable processes, familiarity discrimination and recollection. Aspects of what is known of potential neuronal substrates of familiarity discrimination are reviewed. Lesion studies have established that familiarity discrimination for individual visual stimuli is effected by a system centred on the perirhinal cortex of the temporal lobe. The fundamental change that encodes prior occurrence of such stimuli appears to be a reduction in the response of neurons in anterior inferior temporal (including perirhinal) cortex when a stimulus is repeated. The neuronal responses rapidly signal the presence of a novel stimulus, and are evidence of long-lasting learning after a single exposure. Computational modelling indicates that a neuronal network based on such a change in responsiveness is potentially highly efficient in information theoretic terms. Processes that occur in long-term depression within the perirhinal cortex provide candidate synaptic plastic mechanisms for that underlying the change, but such linkage remains to be experimentally established.

Sensory preconditioning in rats with lesions of the anterior thalamic nuclei: evidence for intact nonspatial 'relational' processing

Rats with neurotoxic lesions centered in the anterior thalamic nuclei were trained in two versions of a nonspatial, sensory preconditioning procedure. In both versions, two stimulus compounds (AX and BY) were first presented and then X, but not Y, was paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus. This procedure resulted in greater conditioned responding to A than B. Anterior thalamic lesions had no apparent effect on these two examples of sensory preconditioning, nor did they affect fear conditioning or conditioned taste aversion. In contrast, the same lesions led to a severe deficit on a test of spatial memory. These results help to refine our understanding of the contribution of the anterior thalamic nuclei to spatial memory.

Hippocampus lesions impair landmark array spatial learning in homing pigeons: a laboratory study

Hippocampal (HF)-lesioned pigeons display impaired homing ability when flying over familiar terrain, where they are presumably relying on a map-like representation of familiar landmarks to navigate. However, research carried out in the field precludes a direct test of whether hippocampal lesions compromise the ability of homing pigeons to navigate by familiar landmarks. To examine more thoroughly the relationship between hippocampus and landmark spatial learning, control, neostriatum-lesioned, and HF-lesioned homing pigeons were trained on two open field, laboratory, conditional discrimination tasks. One was a visual landmark array task, and the other was a room color discrimination task. For the tasks, the correct of three differently colored food bowls was determined by the spatial relationship among a group of five landmarks and room color, respectively. Intact control birds successfully learned both tasks, while neostriatum-lesioned birds successfully learned the landmark array task-the only task on which they were trained. By contrast, HF-lesioned birds successfully learned the room color task but were unable to learn the landmark array task. The data support the hypothesis that homing performance deficits observed in the field following hippocampal lesions are in part a consequence of an impairment in the ability of lesioned pigeons to use familiar visual landmarks for navigation.

Stereological estimates of number and length of capillaries in subdivisions of the human hippocampal region

The hippocampal formation is a neuroanatomically well-defined region of the brain involved in memory processes. In view of the functional importance of the region and its involvement in a number of brain pathologies, including Alzheimer's disease and temporal lobe epilepsy, a quantitative description of its vascular supply represents an important first step in evaluating the involvement of vascular changes in these phenomena. Unbiased estimates of the length and connectivity of the vascular supply of brain regions have not been described previously. The total number, total length, and distribution of the diameters of capillaries were estimated in the five major subdivisions of the hippocampal formation (fascia dentata, hilus, CA3-2, CA1, and subiculum) in 5 normal males, 52-84 years of age. These estimates were used to derive several other structural parameters. Both the primary and the derived parameters were used to make inter- and intra-individual comparisons. For each of the five major subdivisions from each individual, the volume was estimated using the Cavalieri principle. The total capillary length was estimated on 3-microm-thick plastic isotropic uniform random sections. Using a topological definition of a capillary unit and the optical disector, total capillary number was estimated in 40-microm-thick plastic sections. Length-and number-weighted three-dimensional diameter distributions were obtained from the thin and thick plastic sections, respectively. In each subdivision the total length of capillaries was correlated with previously obtained data on the number of neurons in the same subdivisions of the same individuals. Intersubdivisional differences were observed, in that the hilus of the dentate gyrus had fewer capillaries per unit volume than the other four subdivisions. Interindividual comparisons indicate that the interindividual variances are of a magnitude suitable for sensitive group comparisons. The design-based stereological methods that were used in the analyses can provide a basis for a new unbiased approach to the estimation of vascular parameters in well-defined regions of the brain.

The influence of selective lesions to components of the hippocampal system on the orienting [correction of orientating] response, habituation and latent inhibition

The contribution that components of the hippocampal system in the rat make to the modulation of attention or stimulus processing was assessed using several simple behavioural assays: the orienting response (OR) to a novel stimulus, the subsequent habituation and dishabituation of this OR, and the latent inhibition effect that typically results from repeated exposure to a stimulus. Excitotoxic lesions of components of the hippocampal system produce dissociable effects on the OR, habituation and latent inhibition: lesions of the entorhinal cortex have no effect on the OR or changes in the OR during exposure to a stimulus, but disrupt latent inhibition; lesions of the subiculum disrupt the OR but not latent inhibition; and lesions of the hippocampus disrupt the OR and latent inhibition. These effects have important implications for our understanding of habituation and latent inhibition, and the neural mechanisms involved in attentional modulation.

Tellurium-induced cognitive deficits in rats are related to neuropathological changes in the central nervous system

The effects of sodium tellurite 0.1 and 0.4 mg/kg were assessed in the Morris water maze. Two days after treatment rats were tested for acquisition (posttreatment days 3-6) and on seventh day on a spatial retention task. Tellurium treatment was found to cause significant impairment in retention of the spatial learning task. Locomotor disturbances were not the cause of the observed effects. Ultrastructural observations showed neuropathological changes in hippocampus subfields and prefrontal cortex with swelling of synapses, astrocytes and astrocytic processes around the vessels in the cerebral cortex neuropil. Severity of the observed changes in glial-neuronal unit was in correlation with the extent of learning impairment. A direct injury of Schwann cells with the secondary myoclasis was noted in the sciatic nerve. Our results indicate that acute treatment with sodium tellurite results in impairment of learning and spatial memory.

Critical role of the hippocampus in memory for sequences of events

Recent models of hippocampal function emphasize the potential role of this brain structure in encoding and retrieving sequences of events that compose episodic memories. Here we show that hippocampal lesions produce a severe and selective impairment in the capacity of rats to remember the sequential ordering of a series of odors, despite an intact capacity to recognize odors that recently occurred. These findings support the hypothesis that hippocampal networks mediate associations between sequential events that constitute elements of an episodic memory.

Dissociating basal forebrain and medial temporal amnesic syndromes: insights from classical conditioning

In humans, anterograde amnesia can result from damage to the medial temporal (MT) lobes (including hippocampus), as well as to other brain areas such as basal forebrain. Results from animal classical conditioning studies suggest that there may be qualitative differences in the memory impairment following MT vs. basal forebrain damage. Specifically, delay eyeblink conditioning is spared after MT damage in animals and humans, but impaired in animals with basal forebrain damage. Recently, we have likewise shown delay eyeblink conditioning impairment in humans with amnesia following anterior communicating artery (ACoA) aneurysm rupture, which damages the basal forebrain. Another associative learning task, a computer-based concurrent visual discrimination, also appears to be spared in MT amnesia while ACoA amnesics are slower to learn the discriminations. Conversely, animal and computational models suggest that, even though MT amnesics may learn quickly, they may learn qualitatively differently from controls, and these differences may result in impaired transfer when familiar information is presented in novel combinations. Our initial data suggests such a two-phase learning and transfer task may provide a double dissociation between MT amnesics (spared initial learning but impaired transfer) and ACoA amnesics (slow initial learning but spared transfer). Together, these emerging data suggest that there are subtle but dissociable differences in the amnesic syndrome following damage to the MT lobes vs. basal forebrain, and that these differences may be most visible in non-declarative tasks such as eyeblink classical conditioning and simple associative learning.

Computational modeling of pair-association memory in inferior temporal cortex

Distinctive neuronal activities related to visual stimulus-stimulus association have been found in the inferior temporal (IT) cortex of monkeys. They provide an important clue to elucidating the memory mechanisms of the brain, but do not accord with existing neural network models. In the present paper, we clarify the computational principle required for reproducing the empirical data and construct a biologically feasible model that learns and performs a delayed pair-association task. This model is composed of two neural networks, association network N1 and trainer network N2, and pair-association memories are formed by their interactions. Specifically, N2 receives the output of N1 in addition to an external input, and sends a learning signal back to N1; this signal works as a guide for shifts in output pattern or state transitions of N1, and memory traces are engraved along its path, so that a trajectory attractor connecting from the cue-coding to the target-coding state is formed in N1. Computer simulation shows that the model not only distinguishes the target in the task, but also explains the activity of the IT neurons very well. It is reasonable to presume that N1 and N2 correspond to area TE and the rhinal cortex, respectively; based on this theory, we explain some physiological findings on learning and memory, and also make several predictions.

Medial dorsal thalamic lesions impair blocking and latent inhibition of the conditioned eyeblink response in rats

The effects of lesions of the medial dorsal thalamic nucleus (MD) on blocking and latent inhibition (LI) of the rat eyeblink response were examined in the present study. Previous work has demonstrated that the cingulate cortex and related thalamic areas are involved in processing conditioning stimuli throughout training. The experiments in the present study tested the hypothesis that disruption of cingulothalamic stimulus processing produced by lesions of the MD would impair 2 types of associative learning that involve decremental changes in attention. In Experiment 1, MD lesions severely impaired blocking. In Experiment 2, MD lesions severely impaired LI. The results indicate that lesions of the MD impair incremental, decremental, or both types of changes in stimulus processing during learning.

Direct and indirect measures of verbal relational memory following anterior temporal lobectomy

Medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures are implicated in forming conjunctions between events in order to form enduring relational memories; these memories are not evident using direct measures with varieties of amnesic subjects. Extratemporal brain structures are thought to be responsible for preserved memories, which are sometimes detectable using indirect measures. The present study tests this theory of multiple memory systems by examining whether preserved learning can be demonstrated for relational material in MTL-disordered subjects using an indirect measure which minimises conscious mediation of performance. The subjects had undergone anterior temporal lobectomy for relief of temporal lobe epilepsy: left-sided (LATL) cases had a mild verbal amnesia and right-sided (RATL) cases had better verbal memory, forming a comparison group. A direct measure of verbal relational memory was provided by successive trials of cued recall in a specially-constructed paired associate learning task with arbitrarily paired words; pairs consisted of either concrete or abstract words. LATL subjects performed worse than RATL subjects, and particularly so with abstract words. Following direct testing, memory for the pairings was measured indirectly using a masked recognition priming technique. RATL subjects showed savings in RT, demonstrating that masked priming can reveal evidence of the formation of conjunctions. Critically, LATL subjects showed no evidence of preserved learning with priming. Thus when MTL structures are damaged, relational memory appears to be affected without exception, consistent with the tenets of multiple memory systems theory.

Hippocampal damage and exploratory preferences in rats: memory for objects, places, and contexts

Rats have a natural tendency to spend more time exploring novel objects than familiar objects, and this preference can be used as an index of object recognition. Rats also show an exploratory preference for objects in locations where they have not previously encountered objects (an index of place memory) and for familiar objects in contexts different from those in which the objects were originally encountered (an index of context memory). In this experiment, rats with cytotoxic lesions of the hippocampal formation were tested on all three versions of the novelty-preference paradigm, with a 5-min retention interval between the familiarization and test phases. Rats with sham lesions displayed a novelty preference on all three trial types, whereas the rats with hippocampal lesions displayed a novelty preference on Object trials but did not discriminate between the objects on Place trials or Context trials. The findings indicate that hippocampal damage impairs memory for contextual or spatial aspects of an experience, whereas memory for objects that were part of the same experience are left relatively intact.

Long-lasting effects of prenatal MAM treatment on water maze performance in rats: associations with altered brain development and neurotrophin levels

We previously reported that prenatal methylazoxymethanol (MAM) administered on days 11 and 12 of rat pregnancy induces structural changes in the cytoarchitecture of the hippocampal-entorhinal axis. We also showed that young and middle-aged prenatally treated MAM animals displayed changes in brain neurotrophin levels [Neurosci. Lett. 309 (2001) 113; Physiol. Behav. 71 (2000) 57.]. To continue this line of investigation, the working hypothesis adopted was that prenatal MAM administration, by interfering with limbic neurogenesis, could impair learning and memory ability of aged animals in the water maze. It was found that injection of MAM during early rat brain development induced deficits in both the acquisition and retention phases of the Morris maze. These behavioral changes were associated with significant changes in brain nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), reduced choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) immunoreactivity in forebrain cholinergic neurons and loss of neuropeptide Y (NPY) immunodistribution in cells of the entorhinal cortex. This finding, as well as confirming previous studies showing that injection of prenatal MAM administration induces significant changes in hippocampal-entorhinal axis neurogenesis and marked behavioral deficits in adult life, provides additional experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis that loss of NGF and/or BDNF-receptive or producing cells can co-occur at the onset of neurodevelopmental disorders.

What's new with the amnesic patient H.M.?

H.M. became amnesic in 1953. Since that time, nearly 100 investigators, first at the Montreal Neurological Institute and since 1966 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have participated in studying him. We all understand the rare opportunity we have had to work with him, and we are grateful for his dedication to research. He has taught us a great deal about the cognitive and neural organization of memory. We are in his debt.

Spatial memory and hippocampal pallium through vertebrate evolution: insights from reptiles and teleost fish

The forebrain of vertebrates shows great morphological variation and specialized adaptations. However, an increasing amount of neuroanatomical and functional data reveal that the evolution of the vertebrate forebrain could have been more conservative than previously realized. For example, the pallial region of the teleost telencephalon contains subdivisions presumably homologous with various pallial areas in amniotes, including possibly a homologue of the medial pallium or hippocampus. In mammals and birds, the hippocampus is critical for encoding complex spatial information to form map-like cognitive representations of the environment. Here, we present data showing that the pallial areas of reptiles and fish, previously proposed as homologous to the hippocampus of mammals and birds on an anatomical basis, are similarly involved in spatial memory and navigation by map-like or relational representations of the allocentric space. These data suggest that early in vertebrate evolution, the medial pallium of an ancestral fish group that gave rise to the extant vertebrates became specialized for processing and encoding complex spatial information, and that this functional trait has been retained through the evolution of each independent vertebrate lineage.

Water maze versus radial maze: differential performance of rats in a spatial delayed match-to-position task and response to scopolamine

Studies rarely assess treatment effects across tasks; the present experiments addressed this issue. In Experiments 1 and 2, rats (n=12) were trained and then tested with variable delays on a spatial match-to-position task sequentially in the water and radial mazes (in counterbalanced order). Experiment 1 compared the effect of 0-, 60- and 1440-min delays on performance in both mazes. Rats required fewer (P<0.05) mean (+/-S.E.M.) sessions to reach criterion performance in the water (11.0+/-1.0) versus radial maze (19.3+/-2.2). In test sessions, performance was impaired delay-dependently when scores were averaged across the two tasks (P<0.05) but no significant effect of task or task x delay interaction was found. In the second experiment, the same rats were retrained and tested with 0-, 1-, 3- and 5-min delays in both mazes and testing followed the administration of scopolamine (0, 0.1, 0.4 and 0.8 mg/kg). The mean (+/-S.E.M.) number of acquisition sessions was similar in the radial (6.33+/-0.34) and water maze (6.08+/-0.46). On the sample portion of trials, performance was impaired at the 0.8 mg/kg dose of scopolamine (P<0.02) in the radial maze only. On the recognition portion of trials in the radial maze, the 0.4 and 0.8 mg/kg doses of scopolamine impaired performance whereas in the water maze task the 0.8 mg/kg dose impaired performance. The pattern of results may reflect different natural tendencies of rats to alternate (win-shift) versus not alternate (win-stay) in dry land versus swim tasks.

Non-spatial acquisition and retention deficits following small excitotoxic lesions within the hippocampus in monkeys

Marmoset monkeys with excitotoxic lesions confined to cornu ammonis subfields 1-3, subiculum and pre-subiculum, but sparing the entorhinal cortex, were impaired on retention and learning of conditional object-choice discriminations. For each of these discriminations, the monkeys were required to choose one of two objects depending on which of two patterned backgrounds was used on each trial. Two styles of order of trial presentation were used: 'random' presentation which maximised the degree of interference between trials, and 'runs' presentation which was intended to encourage the monkeys to learn each component of the discrimination separately. Before surgery monkeys found the discriminations more difficult to learn when the trials were presented in the 'runs' style than when presented in the 'random' style suggesting that the task is best learnt by applying a conditional rule. After surgery a significant 'group x style' interaction indicated that the 'runs' style was especially difficult for the lesioned monkeys. From these results we suggest that the hippocampus is involved in learning about and remembering non-spatial, conditional relations between objects.

Perspectives on object-recognition memory following hippocampal damage: lessons from studies in rats

One of the routine memory abilities impaired in amnesic patients with temporal-lobe damage is object-recognition memory--the ability to discriminate the familiarity of previously encountered objects. Reproducing this impairment has played a central role in animal models of amnesia during the past two decades, and until recent years most of the emphasis was on describing how hippocampal damage could impair object recognition. Today most investigators are looking outside the hippocampus to explain the impairment. This paper reviews studies of object-recognition memory in rats with hippocampal damage produced by ablation, fornix transection, or forebrain ischemia. Some new perspectives on previous findings reinforce the conclusion that damage to the hippocampus has little if any impact on the ability to recognize objects, while damage in some areas outside the hippocampus is far more effective. The few circumstances in which hippocampal damage can impair performance on object-recognition tasks are situations where ancillary abilities are likely to play a significant role in supporting task performance. Some of the factors that contributed to the origins and persistence of the hippocampalcentric view of object-recognition are considered, including lesion confounds, failure to distinguish between impaired task performance and impairment of a memory ability, and disproportionate attention to a few lesion studies in monkeys, even though the hypothesis was tested far more times in rats, under a greater variety of conditions, and rejected on nearly every occasion.

Stress, memory, and the hippocampus: can't live with it, can't live without it

Since the 1968s discovery of receptors for stress hormones (corticosteroids) in the rodent hippocampus, a tremendous amount of data has been gathered on the specific and somewhat isolated role of the hippocampus in stress reactivity. The hippocampal sensitivity to stress has also been extended in order to explain the negative impact of stress and related stress hormones on animal and human cognitive function. As a consequence, a majority of studies now uses the stress-hippocampus link as a working hypothesis in setting up experimental protocols. However, in the last decade, new data were gathered showing that stress impacts on many cortical and subcortical brain structures other than the hippocampus. The goal of this paper is to summarize the four major arguments previously used in order to confirm the stress-hippocampus link, and to describe new data showing the implication of other brain regions for each of these previously used arguments. The conclusion of this analysis will be that scientists should gain from extending the impact of stress hormones to other brain regions, since hormonal functions on the brain are best explained by their modulatory role on various brain structures, rather than by their unique impact on one particular brain region.

The effect of cytotoxic lesions of the hippocampus on recognition memory in the rat: effects of stimulus size

Rats with excitotoxic hippocampal lesions were trained on delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) with small goal boxes, containing complex objects, presented on a pseudo trial-unique schedule. A series of experiments then tested performance on repeated presentation of either the small object or large empty goal boxes. All rats acquired the nonmatching rule, but hippocampal-lesioned rats performed less well than controls on choice accuracy for the final 2 blocks of acquisition. In the study's main phase, the lesions impaired choice accuracy when the large empty boxes were used as stimuli. This deficit was ameliorated when the rats were tested with the small object boxes, although the performance of the hippocampal-lesioned rats was still below that of controls. These results extend previous reports of box size-dependent effects of hippocampal aspiration lesions on DNMS and suggest that selective damage to the hippocampus, not neuronal loss in adjacent structures or fiber tracts, is critical for the effect.

Names and words without meaning: incidental postmorbid semantic learning in a person with extensive bilateral medial temporal damage

The authors describe a densely amnesic man who has acquired explicit semantic knowledge of famous names and vocabulary words that entered popular culture after the onset of his amnesia. This new semantic knowledge was temporally graded and existed over and above the implicit memory he demonstrated in reading speed and accuracy, familiarity ratings, and his ability to make correct guesses on unfamiliar items. However, his postmorbid knowledge was limited to verbal labels denoting famous people and words; he possessed virtually no explicit knowledge of the meaning of these words or the identities of these individuals, although there was some evidence that some of this information had been acquired at an implicit level. Findings are discussed in the context of a neural network model (J. L. McClelland, B. L. McNaughton, & R. C. O'Reilly, 1995) of semantic acquisition.