Hippocampal CA3-region is crucial for acquisition and memory consolidation in Morris water maze task in mice.

Full Abstract

This experiment investigated the involvement of the dorsal hippocampal CA3-region in the different phases of learning and memory in spatial and non-spatial tasks. To do so, we temporarily inactivated the CA3-subfield by a focal injection of diethyldithiocarbamate (DDC) which chelates most of the heavy metals present in this region. The effects of temporary inactivation of the CA3-region were examined in an associative task, the Morris water maze (MWM). To study the different phase of memory we used a new behavioural massed-procedure founded on four massed training sessions in the spatial and the non-spatial (cue) version of this task. In the spatial version, we showed that a bilateral injection of DDC into the CA3-region impairs the acquisition but not the recall of spatial information. The main result of this study is that the same injection performed immediately after the training session also perturbed memory consolidation. In the cue version of the MWM, we found no difference between the DDC-injected mice and their controls in acquisition or memory consolidation of non-spatial information. These results suggest that the hippocampal CA3-region is essential for spatial memory processes and specifically in memory consolidation of spatial information.

Author information

Author/s: Florian, Cédrick (C); Roullet, Pascal (P);

Affiliation: Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CRCA), CNRS UMR 5169, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex 4, France.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article

Journal: Behavioural brain research (Behav Brain Res), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2004-Oct; vol 154 (issue 2) : pp 365-74

Dates: Created 2004/08/17; Completed 2004/11/01; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 15313024, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

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