Recognition memory for objects, place, and temporal order: a disconnection analysis of the role of the medial prefrontal cortex and perirhinal cortex.

Full Abstract

Recognition memory requires judgments of the previous occurrence of stimuli made on the basis of the relative familiarity of individual objects, or by integrating information concerning objects and location, or by using recency information. The present study examined the role of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and perirhinal cortex (PRH) in these distinct recognition memory processes using a series of behavioral tests:
a novel object preference task, an object-in-place task, and a temporal order memory task. Also, a disconnection procedure was used to test whether these regions form components of an integrated system for recognition memory. Male DA rats received bilateral lesions in the PRH or mPFC or unilateral lesions placed in both cortices in either the same (PRH-mPFC IPSI) or contralateral (PRH-mPFC CONTRA) hemispheres. A fifth group underwent sham surgery (SHAM). In the object-in-place and temporal order memory tasks, the PRH, mPFC, and PRH-mPFC CONTRA groups were significantly impaired. However, performance in the novel object preference task was only impaired in the PRH group. No group was impaired in the object location task. These results demonstrate that the mPFC and PRH are crucial for object-in-place associational and recency discriminations, whereas the PRH but not the mPFC is important for the discrimination of novel and familiar individual objects. Importantly, these results provide direct support for the hypothesis that to make discriminations based on associational or recency information, both cortical regions operate within an integrated neural network for recognition memory.

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Author information

Author/s: Barker, Gareth R I (GR); Bird, Flora (F); Alexander, Victoria (V); Warburton, E Clea (EC);

Affiliation: MRC Centre for Synaptic Plasticity, Department of Anatomy, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TD, United Kingdom.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience (J Neurosci), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Mar; vol 27 (issue 11) : pp 2948-57

Dates: Created 2007/03/15; Completed 2007/04/05;

PMID: 17360918, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Animals
Entorhinal Cortex - physiology
Exploratory Behavior - physiology
Male
Memory - physiology

Memory - physiology
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Rats
Recognition (Psychology) - physiology
Time Factors

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