Related Papers
39th Annual European Brain and Behaviour Society Abstracts
2007 •
Giorgio Vallortigara
39th Annual European Brain and Behaviour Society Abstracts-Volume 2007, Article ID 23250, 136 pages
Alessandro Treves
Anterior thalamic nuclei lesions and recovery of function: Relevance to cognitive thalamus
Mathieu Wolff, N. McNaughton, Brook Perry, Stephanie Mercer
Injury to the anterior thalamic nuclei (ATN) and their neural connections is the most consistent neu-ropathology associated with diencephalic amnesia. ATN lesions in rats produce memory impairments that support a key role for this region within an extended hippocampal system of complex overlapping neural connections. Environmental enrichment is a therapeutic tool that produces substantial, although incomplete, recovery of memory function after ATN lesions, even after the lesion-induced deficit has become established. Similarly, the neurotrophic agent cerebrolysin, also counters the negative effects of ATN lesions. ATN lesions substantially reduce c-Fos expression and spine density in the retrosplenial cortex, and reduce spine density on CA1 neurons; only the latter is reversed by enrichment. We discuss the implications of this evidence for the cognitive thalamus, with a proposal that there are genuine interactions among different but allied thalamo-cortical systems that go beyond a simple summation of their separate effects.
Molecular Neurobiology
A Neural Systems Analysis of Adaptive Navigation
2000 •
Wayne Pratt
Current Opinion in Neurobiology
Hippocampus and neocortex: recognition and spatial memory
2011 •
Carolina ruiz
Neuropsychology Review
Midline Thalamic Damage Associated with Alcohol-Use Disorders: Disruption of Distinct Thalamocortical Pathways and Function
2020 •
Anna Klintsova
The thalamus, a significant part of the diencephalon, is a symmetrical and bilateral central brain structure. The thalamus is subdivided into three major groups of nuclei based on their function: sensorimotor nuclei (or principal/relay nuclei), limbic nuclei and nuclei bridging these two domains. Anatomically, nuclei within the thalamus are described by their location, such as anterior, medial, lateral, ventral, and posterior. In this review, we summarize the role of medial and midline thalamus in cognition, ranging from learning and memory to flexible adaptation. We focus on the discoveries in animal models of alcohol-related brain damage, which identify the loss of neurons in the medial and midline thalamus as drivers of cognitive dysfunction associated with alcohol use disorders. Models of developmental ethanol exposure and models of adult alcohol-related brain damage and are compared and contrasted, and it was revealed that there are similar (anterior thalamus) and different (intralaminar [adult exposure] versus ventral midline [developmental exposure]) thalamic pathology, as well as disruptions of thalamo-hippocampal and thalamo-cortical circuits. The final part of the review summarizes approaches to recover alcohol-related brain damage and cognitive and behavioral outcomes. These approaches include pharmacological, nutritional and behavioral interventions that demonstrated the potential to mitigate alcohol-related damage. In summary, the medial/midline thalamus is a significant contributor to cognition function, which is also sensitive to alcohol-related brain damage across the life span, and plays a role in alcohol-related cognitive dysfunction.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews
Why do lesions in the rodent anterior thalamic nuclei cause such severe spatial deficits?
2014 •
John Aggleton
Lesions of the rodent anterior thalamic nuclei cause severe deficits to multiple spatial learning tasks. Possible explanations for these effects are examined, with particular reference to T-maze alternation. Anterior thalamic lesions not only impair allocentric place learning but also disrupt other spatial processes, including direction learning, path integration, and relative length discriminations, as well as aspects of nonspatial learning, e.g., temporal discriminations. Working memory tasks, such as T-maze alternation, appear particularly sensitive as they combine an array of these spatial and nonspatial demands. This sensitivity partly reflects the different functions supported by individual anterior thalamic nuclei, though it is argued that anterior thalamic lesion effects also arise from covert pathology in sites distal to the thalamus, most critically in the retrosplenial cortex and hippocampus. This two-level account, involving both local and distal lesion effects, explains...
Neuroscience
Metabolic Brain Activity Underlying Behavioral Performance and Spatial Strategy Choice in Sedentary and Exercised Wistar Rats
2014 •
Clara menendez
Retrosplenial cortex and its role in spatial cognition
Anna Mitchell
Retrosplenial cortex is a region within the posterior neocortical system, heavily interconnected with an array of brain networks, both cortical and subcortical, that is, engaged by a myriad of cognitive tasks. Although there is no consensus as to its precise function, evidence from both human and animal studies clearly points to a role in spatial cognition. However, the spatial processing impairments that follow retrosplenial cortex damage are not straightforward to characterise, leading to difficulties in defining the exact nature of its role. In this article, we review this literature and classify the types of ideas that have been put forward into three broad, somewhat overlapping classes: (1) learning of landmark location, stability and permanence; (2) integration between spatial reference frames; and (3) consolidation and retrieval of spatial knowledge (schemas). We evaluate these models and suggest ways to test them, before briefly discussing whether the spatial function may be a subset of a more general function in episodic memory.
Scientific reports
Quinolinic acid injection in mouse medial prefrontal cortex affects reversal learning abilities, cortical connectivity and hippocampal synaptic plasticity
2016 •
Annemie Van der Linden
Intracerebral injection of the excitotoxic, endogenous tryptophan metabolite, quinolinic acid (QA), constitutes a chemical model of neurodegenerative brain disease. Complementary techniques were combined to examine the consequences of QA injection into medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of C57BL6 mice. In accordance with the NMDAR-mediated synapto- and neurotoxic action of QA, we found an initial increase in excitability and an augmentation of hippocampal long-term potentiation, converting within two weeks into a reduction and impairment, respectively, of these processes. QA-induced mPFC excitotoxicity impaired behavioral flexibility in a reversal variant of the hidden-platform Morris water maze (MWM), whereas regular, extended MWM training was unaffected. QA-induced mPFC damage specifically affected the spatial-cognitive strategies that mice use to locate the platform during reversal learning. These behavioral and cognitive defects coincided with changes in cortical functional connect...
