• OlveraMaría JoséMJDepartamento de Neurobiología Conductual y Cognitiva, Instituto de Neurobiología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Boulevard Juriquilla No. 3001, Juriquilla, Querétaro, Querétaro 76230, México. and M I Miranda.
• Departamento de Neurobiología Conductual y Cognitiva, Instituto de Neurobiología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Boulevard Juriquilla No. 3001, Juriquilla, Querétaro, Querétaro 76230, México.
• Neuroscience. 2022 Aug 10; 497: 39-52.

AbstractRecognizing and weighing the value of stimuli is necessary for survival, as it allows living things to respond quickly and adequately to new experiences by comparing them with previous ones. Recent evidence shows that context change could affect flavor learning, suggesting a more intricate scenario during complex associations of stimuli with opposite or different valence in a motivational conflict task. Furthermore, linked to the ability to weigh the value of stimuli is the ability to predict the consequences associated with them from previous experiences. The insular cortex (IC) is a brain hub connecting and integrating different sensory, emotional, motivational, and cognitive processing systems. In this regard, previous evidence indicates that glutamatergic activity in this area, mediated by N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs), could be important during positive or negative valence encoding. Hence, the present study examines the involvement of NMDARs in the IC during a complex association of stimuli with opposite valence through the modified inhibitory avoidance (MIA) task and memory updating of a previously learned appetitive context during latent inhibition of the MIA process. This study demonstrates that during a motivational conflict-learning task with stimuli of opposite valences, avoidance memory formation will prevail. NMDARs activation in the IC decreases avoidance memory formation during a complex task (MIA) but not memory formation for an appetitive context. Furthermore, NMDARs activation does not affect the transition from appetitive to aversive learning. Overall, our results propose a different IC-NMDARs function during novel learning and memory updating.Copyright © 2022 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

14 keywords...

hide…