CAREER: Effects of emotion on hippocampal representations and memory retrieval

情绪已被证明对记忆有深远而持久的影响。特别是，负面的情绪记忆甚至在创伤事件发生多年后仍然很明显。在某些情况下，比如创伤后应激障碍（PTSD），创伤记忆被不正确地检索出来，经常干扰日常生活。海马体，一个与记忆形成有关的区域，在习得性恐惧中起着重要作用。然而，情绪信息在海马体亚区储存的具体方式尚不清楚。该项目将研究海马背侧和腹侧区域在恐惧记忆编码和巩固中的作用，通过结合自由运动小鼠的体内记录与遗传、计算和行为工具来评估海马神经元的放电特性在动物形成和检索情绪记忆时如何随时间变化。当动物知道一个特定的地方是可怕的时，背侧和腹侧海马体中的情境表征会发生变化。这些实验对于我们理解情景性恐惧记忆是如何沿着海马纵轴编码的至关重要。这个项目更广泛的影响将是通过对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”项目的贡献来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，为该计划开发的工具将链接到http://www.fi.edu上的科学学习资源，这是一个教育网站，每月有100万次访问。

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.