ICLM Journal Club
This Week
Satoshi Kida
This Friday Satoshi Kida from the Tokyo University of Agriculture will be presenting his work at the ICLM JC. Dr. Kida is a world expert on molecular and cellular mechanisms of consolidation, reconsolidation and extinction.
Title: 'Regulation of fear memory after retrieval - mechanisms of transition from fear to safety'
Abstract: Memory retrieval is not a passive phenomenon. Previous studies have presented evidence that memory retrieval is a dynamic process during which memories can be made stronger, weaker, or their content can be altered. Recent studies have shown that reactivated memory becomes labile after retrieval and is re-stabilized through a gene expression-dependent process known as memory reconsolidation. Memory reconsolidation after retrieval may be used to maintain or update long-term memories, reinforcing or integrating new information into them. In classical Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigms, the reactivation of conditioned fear memory by re-exposure to the conditioned stimulus (CS) in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus (US) also initiates extinction as a form of new learning that weakens fear memory expression (i.e., a new CS-no US inhibitory memory that competes with the original CS-US memory trace). Thus, in the fear conditioning paradigms, memory retrieval also includes extinction learning. Therefore, when fear memory is retrieved, the dominance of the original (fear) or new (extinction) memory traces is thought to determine the fate of memory through their competition. We have tried to understand mechanisms by which the fate of retrieved fear memory is determined. We identified reconsolidation and extinction neurons, and found a memory process for the transition of memory phases from reconsolidation to extinction.
About Us
Introduction
The Integrative Center for Learning and Memory (ICLM) is a multidisciplinary center of UCLA labs devoted to understanding the neural basis of learning and memory and its disorders. This will require a unified approach across different levels of analysis, including;
1. Elucidating the molecular cellular and systems mechanisms that allow neurons and synapses to undergo the long-term changes that ultimately correspond to 'neural memories'.
2. Understanding how functional dynamics and computations emerge from complex circuits of neurons, and how plasticity governs these processes.
3. Describing the neural systems in which different forms of learning and memory take place, and how these systems interact to ultimately generate behavior and cognition.
History of ICLM
The Integrative Center for Learning and Memory formally LMP started in its current form in 1998, and has served as a platform for many interactions and collaborations within UCLA. A key event organized by the group is the weekly ICLM Journal Club. For more than 10 years, graduate students, postdocs, principal investigators, and invited speakers have presented on topics ranging from the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, through computational models of learning, to behavior and cognition. Dean Buonomano oversees the ICLM journal club with help of student/post doctoral organizers. For other events organized by ICLM go to http://www.iclm.ucla.edu/Events.html.
Current Organizers:
Walt Babiec (O'Dell Lab) & Helen Motanis (Buonomano Lab)
Current Faculty Advisor:
Past Organizers:
i) Anna Matynia(Aug 2004 - Jun 2008) (Silva Lab)
ii) Robert Brown (Aug 2008 - Jun 2009) (Balleine Lab)
iii) Balaji Jayaprakash (Aug 2008 - Nov 2011) (Silva Lab)
iv) Justin Shobe & Thomas Rogerson (Dec 2011 - June 2013) (Silva Lab)
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