Term Memory Formation Research Articles

Cellular analysis of associative learning.

Cellular analysis of associative learning.

Chronic administration of sulbutiamine improves long term memory formation in mice: Possible cholinergic mediation

Thiamine deficiency in both man and animals is known to produce memory dysfunction and cognitive disorders which have been related to an impairment of cholinergic activity. The present experiment was aimed at testing whether, inversely, chronic administration of large doses of sulbutiamine would have a facilitative effect on memory and would induce changes in central cholinergic activity. Accordingly mice received 300 mg/kg of sulbutiamine daily for 10 days. They were then submitted to an appetitive operant level press conditioning test. When compared to control subjects, sulbutiamine treated mice learned the task at the same rate in a single session but showed greatly improved performance when tested 24 hr after partial acquisition of the same task. Parallel neurochemical investigations showed that the treatment induced a slight (+10%) but significant increase in hippocampal sodium-dependant high affinity choline uptake. The present findings and previous results suggest that sulbutiamine improves memory formation and that this behavioral effects could be mediated by an increase in hippocampal cholinergic activity.

Inhibition of long-term memory formation in the chicken by anti chick Thy-1 antibody

Anti-chick Thy-1 antibodies administered close to a single trial passive avoidance learning task in day-old chicks resulted in inhibition of long-term memory formation. The retention time course was comparable to that obtained with the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin. The amnestic effect of the anti-chick Thy-1 antibody appears to be mediated solely by immunoglobulin G, and is species specific since anti-rat Thy-1 antibodies did not produce amnesia. The results are consistent with a three stage model of memory formation, suggest a role for glycoproteins in long term memory formation, and emphasise the potential of neuroimmunological tools for investigating the neurological bases of memory formation.

Variations in Retention Performance during Long Term Memory Formation

RETENTION performance as a function of time generally follows a typical monotonically decreasing curve1–3, but there are a few reports showing an improvement with time4–9. Monotonic retention curves have been obtained with octopuses for short-term memory (STM)10 and for long term memory (LTM)11. Here we present a preliminary report of one of a series of experiments using a rapid training procedure which enables us to study changes in retention performance over a period presumed to include the time courses of both STM and LTM.