title: Role of the neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) in amygdalo-hippocampal interactions and salience determination of contextual fear memory.
abstract: Evidence suggests that the neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) is an important molecular constituent of adaptive and maladaptive circuit (re-)organization in the central nervous system. Here, we further investigate its putative involvement in amygdala and hippocampus functions during context fear memory formation. Using laser capture microdissection and quantitative RT-PCR, we show high NCAM mRNA expression levels in the lateral and basolateral subnuclei of the amygdala, as well as their training intensity- and context-dependent regulation during fear memory consolidation. Moreover, we demonstrate that deficits of NCAM-/- mice in context fear memory can be overcome through contextual pre-exposure, i.e. by reducing the modulatory influence of the amygdala on this hippocampus-dependent memory. On the contrary, NCAM-/- mice failed to increase contextual fear memory after salient overtraining, although they adequately increased their response to auditory-cued fear stimuli. Finally, we demonstrate a reduction of amygdalo-hippocampal theta synchronization in NCAM-/- mice during fear memory retrieval. Together, these results suggest an involvement of NCAM-mediated cell recognition processes in information processing of the amygdalo-hippocampal system and in the amygdala-mediated modulation of context fear memory according to stimulus salience.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics & Molecular Neurobiology, Institute of Biology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany. anne.albrecht@ovgu.de
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Albrecht
authors.forename: Jorge Ricardo
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Bergado-Acosta
authors.forename: Hans-Christian
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Pape
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Stork
mesh_terms: D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D018345:Mice, Knockout; D008817:Mice, Mutant Strains; D019006:Neural Cell Adhesion Molecules / Q000172:deficiency / Q000502:physiology*; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D011897:Random Allocation
chemical_list: D019006:Neural Cell Adhesion Molecules