Topic: contextual memories

Hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) is essential for encoding highly similar inputs into distinct neural representations. This function is mainly attributed to the sparsely firing excitatory granule cells. It is not known how excitatory DG neurons modify their firing patterns in response to different conditions, to facilitate learning. We studied the activity of excitatory DG neurons during discrimination fear conditioning task (FC) using in vivo one-photon calcium imaging in adult, healthy C57/black mice. We compared learning in males (n = 6) and females (n = 6) and further, in voluntarily running

Early episodic and contextual memories are forgotten despite their distinct impact on personality development and future behaviour. This phenomenon, termed infantile amnesia, is widely seen in humans and is conserved across other altricial species. In previous years it has become evident that infant memories are stored through the plasticity of neuronal ensembles, forming engrams that remain present in the brain in a latent state once forgotten. Recently, it has been shown that alterations in brain development caused by maternal immune activation (MIA) lead to infant memory retention in male o