Topic: associative recognition memory

Associative recognition memory, such as finding your car in a carpark, requires the quick integration of familiarity, spatial location and temporal information that is vital for episodic experience. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is a key integration hub within the associative recognition memory circuit as it receives long range excitatory inputs from the nucleus reuniens (NRe) and intermediate hippocampus (iCA1), both pathways being critical for learning. Inhibitory interneurons play essential roles in spatial and working memory function by gating signal flow and sculpting microcircuit d

The panic of losing your car in the carpark captures the importance of associative recognition memory, i.e. the ability to identify something as familiar, along with where and when it was last seen. However, the neuronal networks underpinning this memory are only just being identified. Effectively modelled through object-in-place (OIP) tasks, associative recognition memory can be represented by the time mice spend exploring novel compared to familiar objects and configurations. During learning, active neurons are recruited into neuronal ensembles making an engram, the neural representation of