Behavioral tagging and capture: long-term memory decline in middle-aged rats

Gros A(1), Wang SH(2).

Author information:
(1)Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
(2)Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK; Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Electronic address: .

Decline in cognitive functions, including hippocampus-dependent spatial memory,
is commonly observed at a later stage of aging (e.g., >20 months old in rodents)
and typically studied after a discrete learning event. How normal aging,
particularly at an early stage, affects the modulatory aspect of memory
persistence is underinvestigated. Previous studies in young animals show that
weak, fading memories can last longer if a modulating event, such as spatial
novelty, is introduced around memory encoding. This is known as behavioral
tagging and capture (BTC). Here, we investigated how early aging (10-13 months
old) affects BTC in an appetitive delayed-matching-to-place task. We trained rats
when they were young and middle aged and found that novelty facilitated long-term
memory persistence in young but not in middle-aged rats. However, re-exposure to
the encoded environment after learning improved memory persistence in middle-aged
rats. BTC, combined with memory reactivation, facilitated memory persistence
through reconsolidation. Our results point toward a weakened tagging and capture
mechanism before reduction of plasticity-related proteins at an early stage of
aging.

Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

 

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