CAREER: Effects of emotion on hippocampal representations and memory retrieval

已有研究表明，情绪对记忆有深远而持久的影响。特别是，即使在创伤性事件发生数年后，负面情绪记忆也可以保持显著。在某些情况下，例如在创伤后应激障碍(PTSD)中，创伤记忆被错误地提取，并经常干扰日常生活。海马体是一个涉及记忆形成的区域，在后天对环境的恐惧中扮演着重要的角色。然而，情绪信息在海马区储存的具体方式还不是很清楚。这个项目将通过结合自由活动小鼠的活体记录和遗传、计算和行为工具来评估随着动物形成和提取情绪记忆，海马神经元的放电特性如何随着时间的推移而变化。人们的预期是，随着动物了解到某个特定的位置是可怕的，背侧和腹侧海马区的上下文表征将发生变化。这些实验将对我们理解情景恐惧记忆是如何沿着海马轴纵向编码至关重要的。该项目的更广泛影响将是通过为富兰克林研究所和宾夕法尼亚大学组织的神经科学在你的世界中的计划做出贡献，加强当地的教育基础设施，从而扩大人们对神经科学领域的兴趣。此外，为该项目开发的工具将链接到http://www.fi.edu，的科学学习资源，这是一个每月欢迎100万访问量的教育网站。

Emotions have been shown to have profound and long-lasting effects on memory. In particular, negative emotional memories can remain salient even years after a traumatic episode occurs. In some cases, such as in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic memories are improperly retrieved and often interfere with daily life. The hippocampus, an area involved in memory formation, plays an important role in learned fear of a context. However, the specific ways in which emotional information is stored in hippocampal subregions are not well understood.This project will investigate the roles of the dorsal and ventral regions of the hippocampus in the encoding and consolidation of fear memories by combining in vivo recordings in freely moving mice with genetic, computational, and behavioral tools to evaluate how the firing properties of hippocampal neurons change over time as animals form and retrieve emotional memories. The expectation is that contextual representations in the dorsal and the ventral hippocampus will change as animals learn that a specific location is fearful. These experiments will be critical to our understanding of how episodic fear memories are encoded along the longitudinal hippocampal axis. The broader impact of this project will be to expand interest in the field of neuroscience by enhancing local infrastructure for education through contributions to the Neuroscience in Your World program organized by the Franklin Institute and the University of Pennsylvania. Also, the tools developed for this program will be linked to the Resources for Science Learning at http://www.fi.edu, an educational website that welcomes 1 million visits per month.