The role of the nucleus basalis magnocellularis in fear conditioning consolidation in the rat

Deep Brain Stimulation in Alzheimer's Disease: Targeting the Nucleus Basalis of Meynert

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is becoming a prevalent disease in the elderly population. Past decades have witnessed the development of drug therapies with varying targets. However, all drugs with a single molecular target fail to reverse or ameliorate AD progression, which ultimately results in cortical and subcortical network dysregulation. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been proven effective for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, and other neurological diseases. As such, DBS has also been gradually acknowledged as a potential therapy for AD. The current review focuses on DBS of the nucleus basalis of Meynert (NBM). As a critical component of the cerebral cholinergic system and the Papez circuit in the basal ganglia, the NBM plays an indispensable role in the subcortical regulation of memory, attention, and arousal state, which makes the NBM a promising target for modulation of neural network dysfunction and AD treatment. We summarized the intricate projection relations and functionality of the NBM, current approaches for stereotactic localization and evaluation of the NBM, and the therapeutic effects of NBM-DBS both in patients and animal models. Furthermore, the current shortcomings of NBM-DBS, such as variations in cortical blood flow, increased temperature in the target area, and stimulation-related neural damage, were presented.

Entorhinal cortex contribution to contextual fear conditioning extinction and reconsolidation in rats

During contextual fear conditioning a rat learns a temporal contiguity association between the exposition to a previously neutral context (CS) and an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) as a footshock. This condition determines in the rat the freezing reaction during the subsequent re-exposition to the context. Potentially the re-exposition without US presentation initiates two opposing and competing processes: reconsolidation and extinction. Reconsolidation process re-stabilizes and strengthens the original memory and it is initiated by a brief re-exposure to context. Instead the extinction process leads to the decrease of the expression of the original memory and it is triggered by prolonged re-exposure to the context. Here we analyzed the entorhinal cortex (ENT) participation in contextual fear conditioning reconsolidation and extinction. The rats were trained in contextual fear conditioning and 24h later they were subjected either to a brief (2 min) reactivation session or to a prolonged (120 min) re-exposition to context to induce extinction of the contextual fear memory. Immediately after the reactivation or the extinction session, the animals were submitted to bilateral ENT TTX inactivation. Memory retention was assessed as conditioned freezing duration measured 72 h after TTX administration. The results showed that ENT inactivation both after reactivation and extinction session was followed by contextual freezing retention impairment. Thus, the present findings point out that ENT is involved in contextual fear memory reconsolidation and extinction. This neural structure might be part of parallel circuits underlying two phases of contextual fear memory processing.

The prototypical histamine H3 receptor inverse agonist thioperamide improves multiple aspects of memory processing in an inhibitory avoidance task

Numerous studies have found that histamine plays a major role in memory and that the histamine H3 receptor (H3R) inverse agonist thioperamide improves cognitive performance in various animal models. However, little is known about the stages of memory that are specifically affected by thioperamide. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of thioperamide on acquisition, consolidation and retrieval processes in a one-trial inhibitory avoidance task in female C57BL/6J mice. In addition, potential state-dependency effects were studied by injecting thioperamide before the training and the test sessions in order to induce similar physiological states during acquisition and retrieval. Our results indicate that post-training systemic administration of thioperamide facilitated consolidation. Moreover, the administration of thioperamide before the training session had no effect on latency to enter the black compartment during training but enhanced memory during the retention test. The administration of thioperamide before the retention test also increased performance, which indicates that this compound ameliorates memory retrieval. Finally, when animals received thioperamide before the training session and before the retention test, the cognitive enhancing effects of thioperamide were not significantly changed. Together, our results show that thioperamide improves cognitive performance in an inhibitory avoidance task through actions on different memory stages. Furthermore, inducing a similar physiological state with thioperamide during acquisition and retrieval do not significantly affect cognitive enhancement. Our results suggest that the blockade of H3R can be helpful for the treatment of neuropsychiatric conditions characterized by deficits affecting several stages of memory processing.

Histaminergic ligands injected into the nucleus basalis magnocellularis differentially affect fear conditioning consolidation

The role of the nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM) in fear conditioning encoding is well established. In the present report, we investigate the involvement of the NBM histaminergic system in consolidating fear memories. The NBM was injected bilaterally with ligands of histaminergic receptors immediately after contextual fear conditioning. Histaminergic compounds, either alone or in combination, were stereotaxically administered to different groups of adult male Wistar rats and memory was assessed as conditioned freezing duration 72 h after administration. This protocol prevents interference with NBM function during either acquisition or retrieval phases, hence restricting the effect of pharmacological manipulations to fear memory consolidation. The results presented here demonstrate that post-training H3 receptors (H3R) blockade with the antagonist/inverse agonist thioperamide or activation with immepip in the NBM potentiates or decreases, respectively, freezing response at retrieval. Thioperamide induced memory enhancement seems to depend on H2R, but not H1R activation, as the H2R antagonist zolantidine blocked the effect of thioperamide, whereas the H1R antagonist pyrilamine was ineffective. Furthermore, the H2R agonist ampthamine improved fear memory expression independently of the H3R agonist effect. Our results indicate that activation of post-synaptic H2R within the NBM by endogenous histamine is responsible for the potentiated expression of fear responses. The results are discussed in terms of activation of H3 auto- and heteroreceptors within the NBM and the differential effect of H3R ligands on fear memory consolidation in distinct brain regions.

The histamine H₃-receptor inverse agonist pitolisant improves fear memory in mice

Numerous studies have demonstrated that brain histamine plays a crucial role in learning and memory and histamine H3 receptor inverse agonists (H3R inverse agonists) have been proposed to treat cognitive disorders. Pitolisant (BF2.649, 1-{3-[3-(4-chlorophenyl)propoxy]propyl}piperidine, hydrochloride) was the first H3R inverse agonist that has been tested in human trials and is well tolerated. The present study investigated whether Pitolisant (0.625-20mg/kg, i.p.) improves consolidation and reconsolidation processes in the fear conditioning task in female C57BL/6J mice. We also tested whether Pitolisant reverses memory deficits induced by the non-competitive N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist dizocilpine (MK-801). Our results indicate that post-training systemic injections of Pitolisant facilitated consolidation of contextual fear memory and reversed amnesia induced by an i.p. injection of 0.12 mg/kg dizocilpine. In addition, none of the doses of Pitolisant we have tested after reactivation (reexposure to the context in which training took place 48 h earlier) affected reconsolidation, whereas dizocilpine disrupted it. However, Pitolisant was able to reverse the deficit in reconsolidation induced by 0.12 mg/kg dizocilpine. The present results are the first demonstration that Pitolisant is effective in improving consolidation processes in the fear condition task and add further evidence to its potential for treating cognitive disorders.