Spatial Relational Memory Requires Hippocampal Adult Neurogenesis

Abstract

The dentate gyrus of the hippocampus is one of the few regions of the mammalian brain where new neurons are generated throughout adulthood. This adult neurogenesis has been proposed as a novel mechanism that mediates spatial memory. However, data showing a causal relationship between neurogenesis and spatial memory are controversial. Here, we developed an inducible transgenic strategy allowing specific ablation of adult-born hippocampal neurons. This resulted in an impairment of spatial relational memory, which supports a capacity for flexible, inferential memory expression. In contrast, less complex forms of spatial knowledge were unaltered. These findings demonstrate that adult-born neurons are necessary for complex forms of hippocampus-mediated learning.

Interaction between Neurogenesis and Hippocampal Memory System: New Vistas

“…When testing spatial memory ability, deficits were described in some studies (Snyder et al 2005;Fan et al 2007;Dupret et al 2008;FarioliVecchioli et al 2008;Imayoshi et al 2008;Garthe et al 2009;Lemaire et al 2012), but not in others (Shors et al 2002;Madsen et al 2003;Raber et al 2004;Meshi et al 2006;Saxe et al 2006;Winocur et al 2006;Wojtowicz et al 2008). From our own study, based on a model that consisted in selectively ablating adult hippocampal neurogenesis by overexpressing the proapoptotic protein Bax in neuronal precursors on administration of doxycycline, we concluded that adult-born neurons are required for an allocentric (and not egocentric) strategy and for the flexible use of the acquired information (Dupret et al 2008).…”

“…To summarize, a clear disruption of trace eye-blink conditioning has been described (Shors et al 2001(Shors et al , 2002, whereas conflicting results have been reported for contextual fear conditioning. Although some studies reported impairment in generating and/or retrieving contextual fear memory Winocur et al 2006;Farioli-Vecchioli et al 2008;Imayoshi et al 2008;Wojtowicz et al 2008;Deng et al 2009;Hernandez-Rabaza et al 2009), opposite results were found in other studies (Shors et al 2002;Clark et al 2008;Dupret et al 2008;Kitamura et al 2009). …”

Mesenchymal stem cells as a treatment for neonatal ischemic brain damage

“…In the healthy adult brain, neurogenesis is necessary to maintain neurological function. Ablation of NPCs from the dentate gyrus reduces neurogenesis and impairs functional plasticity, showing the importance and necessity of neurogenesis after brain injury (57,58).…”

Antidepressant and Proneurogenic Influence of Environmental Enrichment in Mice: Protective Effects vs Recovery

“…With this single goal, equimolecular doses to 50 mg/kg BrdU for both CldU (5-chloro-2 0 -deoxyuridine) and IdU (5-iodo-2 0 -deoxy-uridine) were calculated as published elsewhere (Llorens-Martin et al, 2010), and accordingly to the findings recently published (Dupret et al, 2008;Leuner et al, 2009).…”