James L. McGaugh - US grants

This action is to provide partial support for the Third Conference on the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. This conference is being organized by the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and will offer presentations and discussion by leading investigators from around the world. The topic of the conference will be the relationship between the design of cortical and cortico- subcortical circuitries and the emergence of particular aspects or types of memory, including those involved in cognition. Three issues related to this topic will be discussed on successive days. First, the question of the forms of memory will be explored; speakers on the first day of the meeting will address the question of how many types of memory systems co-exist in brain as well as the neurobiological and psychological relationships existing between them. Descriptions of the substrates of memory, either in terms of cellular chemistries or neural networks, very often fail to specify what is meant by "memory". This practice has generated considerable an unnecessary confusion. Accordingly, the conference will begin with an extended analysis of the characteristics of a wide range of learning paradigms and preparations (from conditioning in invertebrates to episodic memory in humans) and seek to identify commonalities and differences. Nearly all learning theorists assume that most of the storage and processing of memory by humans and other big- brained mammals is accomplished by networks which run through the neocortex and connect it with specific subcortical regions such as the amygdala and hippocampus. The second day of the conference will be concerned with the organized of cortical circuitries, what we know of their plasticity, and how their specialized features might be utilized for memorial operations. Surprisingly enough, there have been very few attempts to link the neurobiology of neocortex with higher psychological functions such as integration and partitioning of memory; in many senses, the second session, which will be directed at this issue, will be breaking new ground. The third and last day of the meeting will explore cortical memory systems using computer models. A spectrum of network models will be discussed, ranging from those grounded in physiology to more purely theoretical constructions. In summary, the conference is designed to explore in sequence three related questions: 1) How many forms of memory are there? 2) How do these forms relate to the specialized circuitry that characterizes cortex? and 3) What types of computational operations must these circuits perform in order to produce memory?

This proposal requests support for the Fourth Conference on the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, to be held at the Univ. of California at Irvine. The participants at this conference will examine learning-induced changes in the nervous system. The keynote speakers and participants include some of best known researchers in the field of learning and memory research. In general, the proposal is of a high quality, novel, integrative and should promote research and critical analysis of ideas in this community.

This action is provide support for the Fifth Conference on the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory to be held in Irvine, CA on October 22-24, 1992. The general theme of this meeting, "Brain and Memory: Modulation and Mediation of Neuroplasticity" is timely and of high importance to the field. State-of-the-art lectures will be given by internationally recognized investigators highlighting four exciting areas. First, the relationship between emotion and memory will be examined. The findings and theories examined in this session have implications for understanding the role of motivation, emotion and stress in learning and memory. Second, recent findings and theory concerning age-related changes in brain and memory in animals and humans will be explored. The third session will focus on the plasticity in the cerebral cortex, which has received only limited attention to date but has long been recognized as the main processing structure and probably the ultimate forebrain storage site of memories. Finally, the relationship between long-term potentiation and memory will be probed. The format of this conference will insure cross-fertilization of ideas on fundamentally important questions on how we learn and remember. Some of the funds are to used for support of selected graduate and postdoctoral students who might overwise not be able to attend this outstanding conference.***//

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed meeting, the Seventh Conference on the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, is the seventh in a series of international conferences organized by the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine. The theme of the conference is: Making Memories in the Brain: Orchestration of Cells and Systems. It will be held in Irvine, California on November 7-9, 2001 (just prior to the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego). The goal of this series of conferences is to provide a forum for presentation and discussion of the latest and most significant findings in the neurobiology of learning and memory. The 2001 meeting will focus on four areas: 1) Local Synaptic Processing in Memory Formation, 2) Interaction of Brain Systems in Memory Formation, 3) Stress and Memory, and 4) Addiction and Memory: Common Mechanisms? Sixteen speakers have agreed to make presentations; they are among the worlds leading investigators in the topics of the conference. The conference format emphasizes discussion by all participants, and four discussion leaders have been selected to lead this interchange of ideas. The general sessions will take place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Irvine; a poster session (75 to 100 posters) will be held in the Herklotz Research Facility on the UC Irvine campus. We anticipate an attendance of 350 to 400 persons, including faculty, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students from the U.S. and many foreign countries.

This project is designed to determine how glucocorticoids, a class of stress hormones released from the adrenal cortex during emotional arousal, affect brain mechanisms regulating the formation of lasting memory. Previous evidence has indicated that glucocorticoids given peripherally or administered directly into certain brain regions enhance long-term memory of inhibitory avoidance training, a task in which rats receive a single footshock after stepping from a lighted compartment into a darkened compartment in a straight alley. However, such experiments could not determine whether the glucocorticoid administration enhances memory of the place where it received the footshock or of the shock experience itself. This research program will use a two-phase inhibitory avoidance paradigm in which rats will be exposed to the inhibitory avoidance apparatus (i.e., context) on one day and given a single brief shock in the apparatus on a second day. This modified paradigm makes it possible to investigate modulatory influences of glucocorticoids on memory for context separately from modulatory influences on memory for the brief shock experience in the same context. The findings of these studies will thus provide insight into the different aspects of experience modulated by glucocorticoids. Furthermore, by administering glucocorticoids into different brain regions, it will determine the contribution of specific brain regions in modulating memory for these different aspects of experience. As the footshock experience is much more emotionally arousing than exposure to the apparatus per se, additional experiments will determine whether differences in arousal-induced noradrenergic activation may underlie possible differential effects of glucocorticoid administration on memory for context or shock. The findings of these experiments will provide new understanding of the brain mechanisms that regulate why remembrance of emotionally arousing experiences is more vivid and persists longer than remembrance of emotionally neutral experiences. Several undergraduate students (many representing minority groups) will be actively involved in performing the experiments.