The aim of our research is to identify the psychobiological basis of memory impairment related to aging or post-traumatic stress. For this purpose, we first needed to develop satisfactory animal models because the memory affected by ageing or post-traumatic stress is the so-called declarative memory (DM), a typically human form of memory. In the course of ageing, MD declines, whereas in post-traumatic stress a paradoxical pattern of memory impairment is observed in which a deficit in declarative memory is associated with an increase in the non-declarative expression of the traumatic event. Therefore, we are developing two main lines of research: one on the decline of declarative memory in aging, and the other on the alterations of memories associated with trauma. Each of our research lines is based on a specific behavioural model in mice.
GluN2B subunits of NMDA receptors have been proposed as a target for treating age-related memory decline. They are indeed considered as crucial for hippocampal synaptic plasticity and hippocampus-dependent […]
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by emotional hypermnesia on which preclinical studies focus so far. While this hypermnesia relates to salient traumatic cues, partial amnesia for […]
A cardinal feature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a long-lasting paradoxical alteration of memory with hypermnesia for salient traumatic cues and amnesia for peri-traumatic contextual cues. […]
The organization of spatial information, including pattern completion and pattern separation processes, relies on the hippocampal circuits, yet the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying these two […]
Injection of corticosterone (CORT) in the dorsal hippocampus (DH) can mimic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-related memory in mice: both maladaptive hypermnesia for a salient but irrelevant simple […]
