Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction: Long-Term Potentiation as a Model for Memory Mechanisms: The Story So Far
- Section One Long-Term Potentiation In Vitro and In Vivo: How Can We Fine-Tune the Current Models for Memory Formation?
- Section Two There is More to the Picture Than Long-Term Potentiation: Theta or Gamma Oscillations in the Brain and the Facilitation of Synaptic Plasticity
- Section Three Making Models from Empirical Data of Synaptic Plasticity
- Section Four Setting the Stage for Memory Formation: Stress, Arousal, and Attention
- 13 Strategies for Studying the Role of LTP in Spatial Learning: What Do We Know? Where Should We Go?
- 14 What Studies in Old Rats Tell Us about the Role of LTP in Learning and Memory
- 15 Implications of the Neuropsychology of Anxiety for the Functional Role of LTP in the Hippocampus
- 16 Differential Effects of Stress on Hippocampal and Amygdaloid LTP: Insight Into the Neurobiology of Traumatic Memories
- Section Five Transgenic Mice as Tools to Unravel the Mechanisms of Memory Formation
- Conclusions and Future Targets
- Index
16 - Differential Effects of Stress on Hippocampal and Amygdaloid LTP: Insight Into the Neurobiology of Traumatic Memories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction: Long-Term Potentiation as a Model for Memory Mechanisms: The Story So Far
- Section One Long-Term Potentiation In Vitro and In Vivo: How Can We Fine-Tune the Current Models for Memory Formation?
- Section Two There is More to the Picture Than Long-Term Potentiation: Theta or Gamma Oscillations in the Brain and the Facilitation of Synaptic Plasticity
- Section Three Making Models from Empirical Data of Synaptic Plasticity
- Section Four Setting the Stage for Memory Formation: Stress, Arousal, and Attention
- 13 Strategies for Studying the Role of LTP in Spatial Learning: What Do We Know? Where Should We Go?
- 14 What Studies in Old Rats Tell Us about the Role of LTP in Learning and Memory
- 15 Implications of the Neuropsychology of Anxiety for the Functional Role of LTP in the Hippocampus
- 16 Differential Effects of Stress on Hippocampal and Amygdaloid LTP: Insight Into the Neurobiology of Traumatic Memories
- Section Five Transgenic Mice as Tools to Unravel the Mechanisms of Memory Formation
- Conclusions and Future Targets
- Index
Summary
SUMMARY
This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the complexity of the long-term potentiation (LTP)-memory debate. We suggest that the notion of LTP as a unitary “memory encoding device” is too simplistic to survive rigorous experimentation and debate. However, while there are difficulties in making the direct connection between LTP and memory, we have not abandoned the proposition that LTP studies can enhance our understanding of the physiology of memory. The primary focus of this chapter is to incorporate studies on LTP, memory, and stress into a synthesis on the dynamics of emotional memory storage in the hippocampus and amygdala. The work is based on the idea that the induction or blockade of LTP can serve as a “diagnostic” measure of how stress affects information processing by different brain structures. The synthesis provides a novel perspective on why the characteristics of nonemotional memories differ from the pathologically intense, and fragmented, characteristics of traumatic memories.
Introduction
Long-term potentiation (LTP) has long been embraced as a model of memory because its characteristics are consistent with models of synaptic storage mechanisms and it has features in common with learning and memory. Just as memory is a lasting trace formed as a result of a brief experience, LTP is a lasting enhancement of synaptic efficacy produced by brief electrical stimulation. Initially, the field was buoyed by repeated findings of commonalities between LTP and memory. The early work showed, for example, that drugs that blocked hippocampal LTP impaired hippocampal-dependent learning, and that LTP, as with memory, was impaired in old animals.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Neuronal Mechanisms of Memory FormationConcepts of Long-term Potentiation and Beyond, pp. 379 - 404Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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