Anterior perirhinal cortex kindling produces long‐lasting effects on anxiety and object recognition memory

Abstract

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is frequently accompanied by memory impairments and, although their bases are unknown, most research has focused on the hippocampus. The present study investigated the importance of another medial temporal lobe structure, the perirhinal cortex (Prh), in changes in memory in TLE using kindling as a model. Rats were kindled twice daily with anterior Prh stimulation until three fully generalized seizures were evoked. Beginning 7 days later and on successive days, rats were tested in an elevated plus maze, a large circular open field, an open field object exploration task and a delayed-match-to-place task in a water maze in order to assess anxiety-related and exploratory behaviour, object recognition memory and spatial cognition. Kindling increased anxiety-related behaviour in both the elevated plus and open field mazes and disrupted spontaneous object recognition but spared all other behaviours tested. These results are consistent with other findings indicating a greater role for the Prh in object memory and emotional behaviour than in spatial memory and contrast with the selective disruption of spatial memory produced by dorsal hippocampal kindling. The site-selectivity of the behavioural disruptions produced by kindling indicates that such effects are probably mediated by changes particular to the site of seizure initiation rather than to changes in the characteristic circuitry activated by limbic seizure generalization. Further investigation of the behavioural effects of Prh kindling may be useful for studying the mechanisms of mnemonic and affective dysfunction associated with TLE and offer insights into bases for variability in such dysfunction across patients.

Regional Changes in Gene Expression after Limbic Kindling

“…For example, kindling of hippocampal field CA1 results in deficits in spatial cognition (Leung et al 1990;Hannesson et al 2001), but fails to affect anxiety-like behavior (Hannesson et al 2001) or object discrimination (Hannesson et al 2005). In contrast, kindling of the amygdala or perirhinal cortex produces increased anxiety-like behavior but has no effect on spatial cognition, whereas perirhinal but not amygdaloid kindling disrupts object recognition memory (Hannesson et al 2001(Hannesson et al , 2005(Hannesson et al , 2008.…”

The rat perirhinal cortex: A review of anatomy, physiology, plasticity, and function

“…The main behavioural role identified for the perirhinal cortex is recognition memory (Mumby and Pinel, 1994;Suzuki, 1996;Liu and Bilkey, 2001;Mumby et al, 2002bMumby et al, , 2007Winters and Bussey, 2005a;Hannesson et al, 2005;Albasser et al, 2009;Brown et al, 2010) but roles for the perirhinal cortex in fear conditioning (Suzuki, 1996) and in spatial memory-related tasks (Wiig and Bilkey, 1994;Glenn et al, 2003;Abe et al, 2009) will also be discussed. Additionally, we will review the developing evidence for the perirhinal cortex in perceptual processing that is typically not addressed in the wider learning and memory literature (Bussey et al, 2003.…”

Antagonism of glutamate receptors in the CA1 to perirhinal cortex projection prevents long-term potentiation and attenuates levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor

“…Further, the perirhinal cortex is involved in object recognition memory (Liu and Bilkey, 2001;Winters and Bussey, 2005a;Hannesson et al, 2005). In rats, temporary lesions of the perirhinal cortex using lidocaine lead to deficits in object recognition task performance (Winters and Bussey, 2005a) and antagonism of NMDA, AMPA and kainate receptors in the perirhinal cortex also lead to deficits in object recognition task performance Bussey, 2005b, Barker et al, 2006).…”