Muscarinic Receptors in Perirhinal Cortex Control Trace Conditioning
Open Access
- 8 April 2009
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Society for Neuroscience in Journal of Neuroscience
- Vol. 29 (14), 4346-4350
- https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.0069-09.2009
Abstract
Trace conditioning requires that a transient representation of the conditional stimulus (CS) persists during the time interval between the CS offset and the onset of the unconditional stimulus. According to one hypothesis, this transient CS representation is supported by endogenous activity in “persistent-firing” neurons of perirhinal cortex (PR). By definition, persistent-firing neurons discharge for tens of seconds or minutes after the termination of the original spike-initiating stimulus. This continued spiking does not depend on recurrent circuit activity and can be reliably and completely blocked by muscarinic receptor antagonists. The present study evaluated the role of PR muscarinic receptors in trace fear conditioning. Before conditioning, rats received bilateral intra-PR infusions with either saline or scopolamine, a nonselective muscarinic receptor antagonist. Scopolamine infusions profoundly impaired trace conditioning but had no effect on delay conditioning or context conditioning. The results encourage a more general understanding of muscarinic receptors in PR and they motivate additional tests of the emerging theory that persistent-firing neurons support aspects of transient memory.This publication has 36 references indexed in Scilit:
- Perirhinal cortex supports acquired fear of auditory objectsNeurobiology of Learning and Memory, 2009
- Auditory trace fear conditioning requires perirhinal cortexNeurobiology of Learning and Memory, 2008
- Temporally structured replay of neural activity in a model of entorhinal cortex, hippocampus and postsubiculumEuropean Journal of Neuroscience, 2008
- Where is the trace in trace conditioning?Trends in Neurosciences, 2008
- Grid cell firing may arise from interference of theta frequency membrane potential oscillations in single neuronsHippocampus, 2007
- Mechanisms underlying working memory for novel informationTrends in Cognitive Sciences, 2006
- Memory traces of trace memories: neurogenesis, synaptogenesis and awarenessTrends in Neurosciences, 2004
- Contributions of postrhinal and perirhinal cortex to contextual information processing.Behavioral Neuroscience, 2000
- Hippocampal encoding of non-spatial trace conditioningHippocampus, 1999
- Scopolamine Administered before and after Training Impairs both Contextual and Auditory-Cue Fear ConditioningNeurobiology of Learning and Memory, 1996