Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Beatriz Agustina Ortega | Email: ortegabeatrizagustina@gmail.com
Beatriz Agustina Ortega1°2°, Noelia V Weisstaub3°,Cynthia Katche1°2°
1° Laboratorio de Memoria, Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia “Prof. E. De Robertis” (IBCN), Facultad de Medicina, CONICET-UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2° Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3° Instituto de Neurociencia Cognitiva y Traslacional (INCYT). CONICET, Fundación INECO, Universidad Favaloro, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the main cause of dementia and is quickly becoming one of the most expensive, lethal, and burdening diseases of this century. Though very heterogeneous, a main feature of the disease is its memory problems. Also, in many cases, Alzheimrer`s patients present psychosis. Dementia-related psychosis has no selective treatment, but recently the focus has been on serotoninergic drugs and particularly on a selective serotonin (5-HT) 2a inverse agonist, supporting a role for the serotoninergic system in AD treatment. 5-HT2a receptors (5-HT2AR) are profusely expressed in cortical regions and have been associated with the modulation of different cognitive processes. However, its role in memory processes is not completely understood. We have found that mPFC 5-HT2aR are involved in the control of interference during retrieval of episodic like memories. In addition, 5-HT2aR are expressed in the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), a key brain area involved in memory processing which deteriorates in early stages of AD. We have recently shown that RSC is involved in recognition memory. Since 5-HT2aR are expressed in RSC, we decided to investigate the role of 5-HT2aR in RSC in different memory phases. We have found that selective blockade of 5-HT2aR affects the consolidation and retrieval in the object recognition (OR) task. These results suggest that 5-HT2aR in the RSC are required for OR memory processing and may stand out as a target for therapeutic use.