title: Medial prefrontal cortex role in recognition memory in rodents.
abstract: The study of the neurobiology of recognition memory, defined by the integration of the different components of experiences that support recollection of past experiences have been a challenge for memory researches for many years. In the last twenty years, with the development of the spontaneous novel object recognition task and all its variants this has started to change. The features of recognition memory include a particular object or person ("what"), the context in which the experience took place, which can be the arena itself or the location within a particular arena ("where") and the particular time at which the event occurred ("when"). This definition instead of the historical anthropocentric one allows the study of this type of episodic memory in animal models. Some forms of recognition memory that require integration of different features recruit the medial prefrontal cortex. Focusing on findings from spontaneous recognition memory tasks performed by rodents, this review concentrates on the description of previous works that have examined the role that the medial prefrontal cortex has on the different steps of recognition memory. We conclude that this structure, independently of the task used, is required at different memory stages when the task cannot be solved by a single item strategy.
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Comportamiento y Cognición Experimental, Grupo de Neurociencia de Sistemas, Instituto de Fisiología y Biofísica Houssay, Facultad de Medicina, UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155 7mo piso, Buenos Aires C1121ABG, Argentina.
authors.forename: Juan Facundo
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Morici
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencias, Facultad de Medicina, UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155 3er piso, Buenos Aires C1121ABG, Argentina.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bekinschtein
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Comportamiento y Cognición Experimental, Grupo de Neurociencia de Sistemas, Instituto de Fisiología y Biofísica Houssay, Facultad de Medicina, UBA-CONICET, Paraguay 2155 7mo piso, Buenos Aires C1121ABG, Argentina. Electronic address: nweisstaub@fmed.uba.ar.
authors.forename: Noelia V
authors.initials: NV
authors.lastname: Weisstaub
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D006624:Hippocampus; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Acquisition; Consolidation; Object recognition; Recognition memory; Retrieval; Rodents; mPFC