ePoster

Role of ionotropic glutamate receptors in multimodal learning of pheromone locations

Shruti Dattatray Marathe, Meenakshi Pardasani, Nixon M. Abraham
FENS Forum 2024(2024)
Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Conference

FENS Forum 2024

Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Resources

Authors & Affiliations

Shruti Dattatray Marathe, Meenakshi Pardasani, Nixon M. Abraham

Abstract

Pheromone signalling regulates rodents’ social and reproductive behaviours. Learning and memorizing pheromone locations is a multimodal phenomenon since pheromones can be found on naturally occurring entities of various shapes and sizes in the environment. To investigate the neural basis of this behaviour, a pheromone place preference paradigm was developed, which required mice to use their olfactory and whisker systems to detect and memorize the pheromone locations. Female mice were trained to detect and learn the location of urinary volatiles from a chamber guarded by specific orifice sizes and differentiate it from the neutral stimulus (water) containing a chamber, guarded by different-sized orifices. After 15 days of training, the mice were tested for their ability to remember these locations in the absence of pheromone cues. Using this paradigm, we aimed to investigate the role of ionotropic glutamate receptors in regulating pheromone location memory. We deleted the subunits of iGluRs, the GluA2 subunit of AMPARs and the NR1 subunit of NMDARs, of GABAergic interneurons from the accessory olfactory bulb. These mice exhibited a decreased preference towards the urine chamber on memory day compared to control animals. Our results thus establish the role of iGluRs in controlling multimodal learning of pheromone locations.

Unique ID: fens-24/role-ionotropic-glutamate-receptors-bcd9bc78