Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Ivan Alvarez | Email: Ivan12alvarez@gmail.com
Ivan Alvarez1°, Agustina Pivato1°,Matias Samper1°, Mario Pagani1°
1° Instituto de Fisiología y Biofísica Bernardo Houssay, UBA-CONICET, Facultad de Medicina
Complex phenotypes including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, psychological disorders or cognitive property are understood as phenotypes with very low heritability and therefore highly susceptible to environmental conditions. In addition, complex phenotypes are understood to be highly sensitive to the genetic background. However, while we were studying habituation memory in exploratory activity and context recognition memory, we found unexpected variability in some situations and unexpected stable performance index in other conditions. Therefore we hypothesized that specific behavioral phenotypes may have specific sensibility to some environmental factors but not to other factors. A similar situation can be found when genetic factors are considered. Thus we examined the effect of temperature, humidity, genetic background (considering the same background from distinct origins and different genetic backgrounds) and also genotypes with distinct levels of cAMP signaling.
These preliminary results indicated that some but not all complex genotypes in our study are susceptible to environmental and genetic variations. In addition, some phenotypes appear to be more sensitive to environmental and genetic variations than others suggesting a much larger number of genes required for such behavioral performance.