Alleviation of infantile amnesia in rats by means of a pharmacological contextual state

Engram neurons: Encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and forgetting of memory

Tremendous strides have been made in our understanding of the neurobiological substrates of memory - the so-called memory "engram". Here, we integrate recent progress in the engram field to illustrate how engram neurons transform across the "lifespan" of a memory - from initial memory encoding, to consolidation and retrieval, and ultimately to forgetting. To do so, we first describe how cell-intrinsic properties shape the initial emergence of the engram at memory encoding. Second, we highlight how these encoding neurons preferentially participate in synaptic- and systems-level consolidation of memory. Third, we describe how these changes during encoding and consolidation guide neural reactivation during retrieval, and facilitate memory recall. Fourth, we describe neurobiological mechanisms of forgetting, and how these mechanisms can counteract engram properties established during memory encoding, consolidation, and retrieval. Motivated by recent experimental results across these four sections, we conclude by proposing some conceptual extensions to the traditional view of the engram, including broadening the view of cell-type participation within engrams and across memory stages. In collection, our review synthesizes general principles of the engram across memory stages, and describes future avenues to further understand the dynamic engram.

Developmental rodent models of fear and anxiety: from neurobiology to pharmacology

Anxiety disorders pose one of the biggest threats to mental health in the world, and they predominantly emerge early in life. However, research of anxiety disorders and fear-related memories during development has been largely neglected, and existing treatments have been developed based on adult models of anxiety. The present review describes animal models of anxiety disorders across development and what is currently known of their pharmacology. To summarize, the underlying mechanisms of intrinsic 'unlearned' fear are poorly understood, especially beyond the period of infancy. Models using 'learned' fear reveal that through development, rats exhibit a stress hyporesponsive period before postnatal day 10, where they paradoxically form odour-shock preferences, and then switch to more adult-like conditioned fear responses. Juvenile rats appear to forget these aversive associations more easily, as is observed with the phenomenon of infantile amnesia. Juvenile rats also undergo more robust extinction, until adolescence where they display increased resistance to extinction. Maturation of brain structures, such as the amygdala, prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, along with the different temporal recruitment and involvement of various neurotransmitter systems (including NMDA, GABA, corticosterone and opioids) are responsible for these developmental changes. Taken together, the studies described in this review highlight that there is a period early in development where rats appear to be more robust in overcoming adverse early life experience. We need to understand the fundamental pharmacological processes underlying anxiety early in life in order to take advantage of this period for the treatment of anxiety disorders.

Ontogeny of contextual fear memory formation, specificity, and persistence in mice

Pinpointing the precise age when young animals begin to form memories of aversive events is valuable for understanding the onset of anxiety and mood disorders and for detecting early cognitive impairment in models of childhood-onset disorders. Although these disorders are most commonly modeled in mice, we know little regarding the development of learning and memory in this species because most previous studies have been restricted to rats. Therefore, in the present study, we constructed an ontogenetic timeline of contextual fear memory ranging from infancy to adulthood in mice. We found that the ability of mice to form long-term context-shock associations emerged ∼13-14 d of age, which is several days earlier than previously reported for rats. Although the ability to form contextual fear memories remained stable from infancy into adulthood, infant mice had shorter-lasting memories than adolescent and adult mice. Furthermore, we found that mice subjected to fetal alcohol exposure showed a delay in the developmental emergence of contextual fear memory, illustrating the utility of this ontogenetic approach in detecting developmental delays in cognitive function stemming from maladaptive early life experience.

The effect of adverse rearing environments on persistent memories in young rats: removing the brakes on infant fear memories

Mental health problems are often assumed to have their roots in early-life experiences. However, memories acquired in infancy are rapidly forgotten in nearly all species (including humans). As yet, a testable mechanism on how early-life experiences have a lasting impact on mental health is lacking. In these experiments, we tested the idea that infant adversity leads to an early transition into adult-like fear retention, allowing infant memories to have a longer-lasting influence. Rats were exposed to maternal separation (3 h per day) across postnatal days (P) 2-14, or their mother was given corticosterone in her drinking water across the same period. Infant rats were then trained to fear a conditioned stimulus (CS) paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) on P17. Retention of the fear association was then tested 1-55 days later. When tested one day after the CS-US association was formed, both standard-reared (SR) and maternally-separated (MS) rats exhibited strong memory. However, when tested 10 days later, SR rats exhibited robust forgetting, whereas MS rats exhibited near-perfect retention. These effects were mimicked by exposing the mother to the stress hormone corticosterone in the drinking water. Finally, fear associations in P17 MS rats were retained for up to 30 days. Our findings point to differences in retention of fear as one factor that might underlie the propensity of stress-exposed individuals to exhibit early anxiety symptoms and suggest that manipulations of the corticosterone system may hold the key to ameliorating some of the effects of early stress on persistent retention of fear.

Opioid receptors regulate retrieval of infant fear memories: effects of naloxone on infantile amnesia

The authors examined the role of the endogenous opioid system in infantile amnesia for contextual fear conditioning. Rats that were 18 days of age received an aversive footshock in a novel context. Rats displayed conditioned fear when tested 1 min after training but not 24 hr after training. Systemic injection of the opioid receptor antagonist naloxone prior to test, but not immediately after training, alleviated infantile amnesia. Naloxone also alleviated infantile amnesia when injected prior to test 7 days after training. These effects of naloxone were due to actions on central rather than peripheral opioid receptors and were not due to any tendency of the drug to produce fear or freezing. These results show that central opioid receptors regulate retrieval of fear memories in infant rats.

Recovery of fear memories in rats: role of gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) in infantile amnesia

Infantile amnesia is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but its neural bases remain largely unknown. The authors identify a role for GABAergic transmission in suppressing retrieval of memories acquired in infancy. Eighteen-day-old rats received pairings of white noise and shock; considerable forgetting of this experience (assessed by freezing) occurred after 10 days. The memory was recovered by pretest administration of the GABAA inverse agonist FG7142 10 days, but not 2 months, after training. This effect of FG7142 generalized when a passive avoidance procedure was used. Also, FG7142 decreased fear of a latently inhibited conditioned stimulus, showing that the observed memory recovery effect was not due to a state-dependent process. It appears that GABA may be involved in infantile amnesia regardless of the emotional content of the memory.

Intertrial interval manipulations and passive avoidance retention in young Long-Evans hooded rats

Results of several studies indicate that young rats generally require more training than do adults to reach comparable criterion levels of passive avoidance behavior. In addition, younger rats generally show poorer retention performance than adults. In the present study, preweanling and weanling Long-Evans rats were given passive avoidance training at intertrial intervals (ITI) of 2 min, 1 hr, or 24 hr until a 600-s criterion was obtained. A 2-week retention test also was given to each subject. Results indicate that ITI had little effect on rate of acquisition or retention. Acquisition and retention performance did improve with age, as is typically reported with other strains of rats. The present results support previous acquisition and retention studies indicating that the ability to acquire and retain a passive avoidance task for weanling and preweanling rats increases with age.

The effect of multiple reminders on long-term retention in human infants

The present series of experiments compared the effects of single- and multiple-reminder procedures on the long-term memory of 3-month-old human infants. Subjects were trained in the mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm, and the reminder treatment was a brief, noncontingent exposure to the moving mobile. In Experiment 1, independent groups received one or two reminder treatments during the 3 weeks following the conclusion of training. Independent groups were tested 1, 3, 7, 14, or 22 days following the last (or only) reminder (i.e., 21-42 days after the end of training). Although retention was equivalent 1 day after one or two reminder treatments, subsequent retention was significantly prolonged by the second reminder treatment: infants receiving a single reminder treatment demonstrated no evidence of retention 7 days after the reminder, but infants receiving two reminder treatments demonstrated perfect retention as long as 14 days later. In Experiment 2, retention was observed 14 days after two reminder treatments irrespective of whether the treatments were presented during the first and second or the third and fourth weeks following the conclusion of training. In Experiment 3, the effect of three reminder treatments on retention was examined. Although retention was excellent when infants were tested 1 day after the third reminder, retention after longer intervals was no better than that observed after a single reminder treatment.

Passive avoidance memory consolidation and reinstatement in the young rat

Young rats (16-30 days), trained on a one-trial passive avoidance task, were subsequently submitted to the amnesic agent hypothermia 0, 5, 10, 20 or 30 min later, and tested for retention 6 h after training. While hypothermia administered 10 min after training was no longer effective in 30-day rats, it still induced a significant retrograde amnesia in younger animals. In 16- and 18-day rats, administration of hypothermia 20 min after training could still produce a slight but statistically non-significant amnesia. Additionally, exposition to a reinstatement treatment was found to alleviate the amnesic effects of hypothermia in 20- and 30-day-old animals, while it seemed ineffective in 16- and 18-day rats. These findings suggest that the more immature the animal, the longer the consolidation period, the more vulnerable the mnemonic trace, and the less effective a reinstatement treatment for alleviation of retrograde amnesia.

Stimulus attributes of reactivated memory: alleviation of ontogenetic forgetting in rats is context specific

Numerous studies have shown that ontogenetic forgetting (infantile amensia) can be alleviated by a number of different types of reminder treatment. The present study extends the information about the alleviation of infantile amnesia by examining the "content" of the reactivated memory. Toward this purpose, one attribute of memory (environmental context) was examined in rats tested either shortly after training (preamnesic) or after 1-week retention interval. For the latter, a reactivation treatment was used to reverse infantile amnesia. At both intervals, a context shift resulted in impaired performance of a conditioned fear response. These findings demonstrate that environment context is an important component of the originally encoded memory as well as the reactivated amnestic memory. The implications of these results for both the reactivation of memory and general memory processes are discussed.

Alleviation of infantile amnesia in rats by internal and external contextual cues

A previous study [Richardson, R., Riccio, D.C., and Jonke, T. (1983). Alleviation of infantile amnesia in rats by means of a pharmacological contextual state. Devel. Psychobiol., 16:511-518] found that ontogenetic forgetting ("infantile amnesia") in rats was attenuated by a "contextual matching" manipulation: Subjects trained in a distinct pharmacological state and tested in that state retained learned fear better than saline controls. To determine whether improved retention could be obtained with salient but nonpharmacological contexts, two experiments were conducted employing fear conditioning in preweanling rats. In Experiment 1, an internal context (illness induced by lithium chloride) present at training and testing reduced infantile forgetting. In Experiment 2, matching an exteroceptive context (home nest shavings) at training and testing was also found to be sufficient to alleviate infantile amnesia. In both experiments, retention was not improved in controls exposed to the context at training only or testing only, indicating that the contextual effect is not on acquisition or retrieval processes per se. These findings provide indirect support for views that emphasize the role of contextual cues in retrieval (Spear, 1978). In addition, they indicate that contextual matching is not limited to a state dependent drug, but may include a wide range of "distinctive" stimuli.