以色列威兹曼科学研究所Rony Paz课题组发现情感记忆与杏仁核神经元的时间序列有关。相关论文于11月25日在线发表在《自然—神经科学》上。

当猴子学习区分厌恶和愉悦的音-味关联的时候，课题组研究了同时记录的神经元上的尖峰序列。他们表明，三胞神经元展现出与单个神经元的放电模式和配对相关性不同峰值活动的一致时间序列。这些序列在整个较长的试验后阶段发生，包含效价相关信息，随着学习的进行而下降，并选择性地存在于最近将条件刺激与非条件刺激配对引起的活动中。

他们的发现表明，在灵长类杏仁核中跨神经元的时间序列可作为一种编码机制，并可能通过练习最近经历关联来帮助记忆形成。

研究人员表示，情感学习和记忆对于日常行为至关重要，适应性学习和不良适应性学习都取决于杏仁核回路中刺激诱发的活动。行为研究进一步表明，关联后的脱机处理有助于记忆形成。

附：英文原文

Title: Affective memory rehearsal with temporal sequences in amygdala neurons

Author: Tamar Reitich-Stolero, Rony Paz

Issue&Volume: 2019-11-25

Abstract: Affective learning and memory are essential for daily behavior, with both adaptive and maladaptive learning depending on stimulus-evoked activity in the amygdala circuitry. Behavioral studies further suggest that post-association offline processing contributes to memory formation. Here we investigated spike sequences across simultaneously recorded neurons while monkeys learned to discriminate between aversive and pleasant tone–odor associations. We show that triplets of neurons exhibit consistent temporal sequences of spiking activity that differed from firing patterns of individual neurons and pairwise correlations. These sequences occurred throughout the long post-trial period, contained valence-related information, declined as learning progressed and were selectively present in activity evoked by the recent pairing of a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus. Our findings reveal that temporal sequences across neurons in the primate amygdala serve as a coding mechanism and might aid memory formation through the rehearsal of the recently experienced association.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-019-0542-9

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-019-0542-9