PSY492H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Slow-Wave Sleep, Anisomycin, Visual Cortex
Document Summary
Shortly after an experience, memory retrieval is supported by an active short-term memory trace; however, as time goes on this short-term memory trace decays and a more stable long-term memory trace (ltmt) forms. This ltmt supports memory retrieval for a longer time, therefore, consolidation is the process of converting a stmt to a ltmt. Anisomycin is a protein synthesis inhibitor that can be used to investigate consolidation: experiment 1: train rodent with contextual fear conditioning (cfc) then inject anisomycin. Result: freezing significantly drops at 6 and 24hrs. Conclusion: there is protein synthesis for ltm but not stm: experiment 2: cfc task, then inject anisomycin 0, 3, or 24hrs after cfc. Result: when anisomycin is injected right after training freezing response is significantly impaired; however, when inject later 3 or 24hrs freezing is no affected. Conclusion: there seems to be a time-window for when protein synthesis for long-term consolidation occurs.
