Salient experiences are represented by unique transcriptional signatures in the mouse brain
- The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
- Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
- Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
- Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, United States
Abstract
It is well established that inducible transcription is essential for the consolidation of salient experiences into long-term memory. However, whether inducible transcription relays information about the identity and affective attributes of the experience being encoded, has not been explored. To this end, we analyzed transcription induced by a variety of rewarding and aversive experiences, across multiple brain regions. Our results describe the existence of robust transcriptional signatures uniquely representing distinct experiences, enabling near-perfect decoding of recent experiences. Furthermore, experiences with shared attributes display commonalities in their transcriptional signatures, exemplified in the representation of valence, habituation and reinforcement. This study introduces the concept of a neural transcriptional code, which represents the encoding of experiences in the mouse brain. This code is comprised of distinct transcriptional signatures that correlate to attributes of the experiences that are being committed to long-term memory.
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Author details
Funding
Israel Science Foundation (Personal Grant 393/12 & I-CORE 1796/12)
- Ami Citri
The Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellowship (Postdoctoral stipend)
- Bogna Marta Ignatowska-Jankowska
German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (Young Investigator Award 2299-2291.1./2011)
- Ami Citri
Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (Young Investigator Award #18795)
- Ami Citri
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (Research Support)
- Ami Citri
Binational United-States Israel Research Foundation (Research Grant #2011266)
- Ami Citri
Milton Rosenbaum Research Foundation (Research Grant)
- Ami Citri
National Institutes for Psychobiology in Israel (Research Grant 109-15-16)
- Ami Citri
Shimon Peres Postdoctoral Award (Postdoctoral stipend)
- Bogna Marta Ignatowska-Jankowska
ELSC Postdoctoral Award (Postdoctoral stipend)
- Bogna Marta Ignatowska-Jankowska
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (#NS-13-13895-3 ; NS-15-14668-3 ; NS-14-14088-3 ; NS-15-14312-3 ; NS-15-14348-3) of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The protocol was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the Hebrew University. Every effort was made to minimize suffering.
Copyright
© 2018, Mukherjee et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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