1 Misaligned feeding impairs memories 2 Dawn H Loh1,5*, Shekib A Jami2,5, Richard E Flores1, Danny Truong1, Cristina A Ghiani1,3, 3 Thomas J O’Dell4,5, Christopher S Colwell1,5*. 4 5 1Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, 6 University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. 7 2Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology Ph.D. Program, University of California Los 8 Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. 9 3Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, 10 University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. 11 4Department of Physiology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los 12 Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. 13 5UCLA Integrative Center for Learning and Memory, University of California Los Angeles, Los 14 Angeles, CA 90095, USA. 15 16 *Correspondence to:
[email protected],
[email protected]. 1 17 Abstract 18 Robust sleep/wake rhythms are important for health and cognitive function. Unfortunately, many 19 people are living in an environment where their circadian system is challenged by inappropriate 20 meal- or work-times. Here we scheduled food access to the sleep time and examined the impact 21 on learning and memory in mice. Under these conditions, we demonstrate that the molecular 22 clock in the master pacemaker, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), is unaltered while the 23 molecular clock in the hippocampus is synchronized by the timing of food availability. This 24 chronic circadian misalignment causes reduced hippocampal long term potentiation and total 25 CREB expression. Importantly this mis-timed feeding resulted in dramatic deficits in 26 hippocampal-dependent learning and memory.