Dopamine-induced hippocampal plasticity: A synaptic model of foraging in mice

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Memory is important for normal function in society and for our identity as human beings. Many factors influence how well we remember. For example, intuitively, receiving a reward helps you to learn. Receiving a reward after you have learnt can also help you remember. But how is it that later events can help strengthen memories for what happened earlier? This is the conundrum we will address in this proposal; we will study the mechanisms for how reward influences memory of preceding experience. We can investigate this in mice by studying how they learn the location of a reward and then use their memory to navigate back to that same place at a later time. To this end, we will use computer models to predict how mice respond to rewards, and how they find rewarded locations. Then, we will test these predictions in real mice. We will give the mice a food reward at specific locations in a simple maze and then study how they navigate to these rewarded locations. If our computer prediction is correct, the mice will use a part of the brain known as the hippocampus to mark the rewarded locations on a mental map of the maze and then use this map to navigate back to this place. To test this idea, we will use a new technique known as optogenetics to activate or silence part of the mouse brain using a laser. We will then test whether the hippocampus is necessary for the animals to find the rewards, and whether a reward signal needs to enter the hippocampus to mark the reward locations on the mental map. The results should give us new insights into how memory works and how animals navigate using their memory of rewarded locations.