A brief retraining regulates the persistence and lability of a long-term memory
- 1The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel
- 2The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel
- 3Department of Biological Sciences, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA
Abstract
An experience extending the persistence of a memory after training Aplysia californica with inedible food also allows a consolidated memory to become sensitive to consolidation blockers. Long-term (24 h) memory is initiated by 5 min of training and is dependent on protein synthesis during the first few hours after training. By contrast, a more persistent (48 h) memory is dependent on a longer training session and on a later round of protein synthesis. When presented 24 h after training, a 3-min training that produces no memory alone can cause a memory that would have persisted for only 24 h to persist for 48 h. After a 48 h memory has been consolidated, 3 min of training also makes the memory sensitive to a protein-synthesis inhibitor. These findings suggest that a function of allowing a consolidated memory to become sensitive to blockers of protein synthesis may be to allow the memory to become more persistent.
Footnotes
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↵4 These authors contributed equally to this work.
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↵5 Corresponding author.
E-mail avy{at}mail.biu.ac.il; fax 972-3-5352184.
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[Supplemental material is available online at http://www.learnmem.org.]
- © 2010 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press