The Effects of Emotion and Sleep Alterations on Hippocampus- Dependent Memory Consolidation
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 The Effects Of Emotion And Sleep Alterations On Hippocampus- Dependent Memory Consolidation Robin Kay Yuan University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, and the Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Yuan, Robin Kay, "The Effects Of Emotion And Sleep Alterations On Hippocampus-Dependent Memory Consolidation" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2657. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2657 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2657 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Effects Of Emotion And Sleep Alterations On Hippocampus-Dependent Memory Consolidation Abstract The activity of hippocampal place cells is thought to generate the contextual representations in which episodic memories are embedded. However, new memories are susceptible to disruption until they undergo a process known as consolidation, becoming more permanent over time. This dissertation examines how changes in emotion and alterations in sleep patterns influence hippocampus-dependent memory consolidation. I first investigated the role of the dorsal and ventral hippocampus in predator odor fear learning by administering a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor into the dorsal or ventral hippocampus at different stages of contextual fear conditioning. Then, using long-term electrophysiological recordings of place cells in mice undergoing fear and extinction learning, I examined how changes in emotional valence affect spatial representations in the hippocampus. Last, I explored the effects of sleep deprivation on place cell activity in young and aged adult mice during the object-place recognition (OPR) task. I found that HDAC inhibition after context pre-exposure enhanced fear learning in the dorsal hippocampus but led to fear generalization in the ventral, suggesting that the dorsal hippocampus may encode the specific details of a context while the ventral encodes general aspects of the environment. Moreover, electrophysiological recordings in the dorsal hippocampus revealed that different place cells remapped preferentially at different stages of predator odor fear learning and extinction, suggesting that the extinction memory trace is a complex memory composed of old and new learning. Finally, sleep deprivation (SD) impaired learning in young adult animals but enhanced it in aged animals, possibly due to enhanced consolidation of NREM during recovery. Old SD animals and young control mice exhibited stability throughout the experiment in one set of cells, while another set remapped in response to the introduction of objects and again to the moved object. This suggests that successful performance of the OPR task requires animals to maintain a stable representation of the static environment while updating a representation of object locations. Young SD animals exhibited long-term stability in both types of cells, reflecting a failure to update object-place representations, but control old animals exhibited complete global remapping, suggesting that their impairment stems from a failure to consolidate spatial representations formed during training. Together, these data demonstrate that emotion and sleep exert clear influences on hippocampus-dependent memory consolidation. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Psychology First Advisor Isabel A. Muzzio Second Advisor David F. Dinges Keywords aging, fear conditioning, learning, place cells, sleep deprivation Subject Categories Neuroscience and Neurobiology | Psychology This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2657 THE EFFECTS OF EMOTION AND SLEEP ALTERATIONS ON HIPPOCAMPUS-DEPENDENT MEMORY CONSOLIDATION Robin Kay Yuan A DISSERTATION in Psychology Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Supervisor of Dissertation Co-Supervisor of Dissertation _____________________ _______________________ David F. Dinges Isabel A. Muzzio Professor of Psychiatry Associate Professor of Biology Director, Unit for Experimental Psychiatry University of Texas at San Antonio Chief, Division of Sleep and Chronobiology Graduate Group Chairperson _____________________ Sara Jaffee, Professor of Psychology Dissertation Committee: Lori Flanagan-Cato (chair), Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Harvey Grill, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Javier Medina, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine THE EFFECTS OF EMOTION AND SLEEP ALTERATIONS ON HIPPOCAMPUS-DEPENDENT MEMORY CONSOLIDATION COPYRIGHT 2017 Robin Kay Yuan ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Isabel Muzzio for her support and guidance over the last several years. I greatly admire her work ethic and unquenchable optimism, and this dissertation would not be possible without all her help. I would also like to thank Dr. David Dinges, whose enthusiasm at my very first talk for the behavioral neuroscience group convinced me to continue down the path of sleep research, and who has remained a source of encouragement ever since. Additionally, I am grateful to my committee members, Dr. Lori Flanagan-Cato, Dr. Javier Medina, and Dr. Harvey Grill, for all their advice and guidance during my time at Penn. I would also like to thank all the past and present members of the lab who have made contributions to the research presented in this dissertation. Furthermore, I would like to extend a special thanks to family, friends, and loved ones who have supported me in my studies. In particular, I would like to thank my husband, Abraham Cantwell, for his patience and support, and for going above and beyond in providing his assistance on multiple fronts. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge all the mice (especially Marty) who were sacrificed to make this work possible. iii ABSTRACT THE EFFECTS OF EMOTION AND SLEEP ALTERATIONS ON HIPPOCAMPUS-DEPENDENT MEMORY CONSOLIDATION Robin Kay Yuan Dr. Isabel A. Muzzio Dr. David F. Dinges The activity of hippocampal place cells is thought to generate the contextual representations in which episodic memories are embedded. However, new memories are susceptible to disruption until they undergo a process known as consolidation, becoming more permanent over time. This dissertation examines how changes in emotion and alterations in sleep patterns influence hippocampus-dependent memory consolidation. I first investigated the role of the dorsal and ventral hippocampus in predator odor fear learning by administering a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor into the dorsal or ventral hippocampus at different stages of contextual fear conditioning. Then, using long-term electrophysiological recordings of place cells in mice undergoing fear and extinction learning, I examined how changes in emotional valence affect spatial representations in the hippocampus. Last, I explored the effects of sleep deprivation on place cell activity in young and aged adult mice during the object-place recognition (OPR) task. I found that HDAC inhibition after context pre-exposure enhanced fear learning in the dorsal hippocampus but led to fear generalization in the ventral, suggesting that the dorsal hippocampus may encode the specific details of a context while the ventral encodes general aspects of the environment. Moreover, electrophysiological recordings in the dorsal hippocampus revealed that different place cells remapped preferentially at different stages of predator odor fear learning and extinction, suggesting that the extinction memory trace is a complex memory composed of old and new learning. Finally, iv sleep deprivation (SD) impaired learning in young adult animals but enhanced it in aged animals, possibly due to enhanced consolidation of NREM during recovery. Old SD animals and young control mice exhibited stability throughout the experiment in one set of cells, while another set remapped in response to the introduction of objects and again to the moved object. This suggests that successful performance of the OPR task requires animals to maintain a stable representation of the static environment while updating a representation of object locations. Young SD animals exhibited long-term stability in both types of cells, reflecting a failure to update object-place representations, but control old animals exhibited complete global remapping, suggesting that their impairment stems from a failure to consolidate spatial representations formed during training. Together, these data demonstrate that emotion and sleep exert clear influences on hippocampus- dependent memory consolidation. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................................... III ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ IV LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. VIII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 1 1. The Hippocampus ....................................................................................................................