Different temporal profiles of amnesia after intra-hippocampus and intra-amygdala infusions of anisomycin

Abstract

Systemic or intra-hippocampal administration of the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin generally leads to impairments in memory tested 24 hr or more after training but spares memory for a few hours after training. Thus, amnesia does not appear immediately after training but develops with time, findings most often interpreted as evidence for distinct short- and long-term memory processes. However, time courses for the onset of amnesia vary substantially after treatment with protein synthesis inhibitors. Some of the variability across experiments may reflect task-related differences or, perhaps relatedly, may reflect memory processing mediated by different neural systems. In the present experiments, anisomycin was infused into either the hippocampus or the amygdala 20 min before inhibitory avoidance training. Similar to previous findings, intra-hippocampus injections of anisomycin impaired memory tested 48 hr after training yet spared memory tested 4 hr after training. In contrast, intra-amygdala injections of anisomycin impaired memory tested at 0.5, 4, and 48 hr after training, revealing no evidence for spared memory at short times after training. The distinct temporal properties for amnesia following anisomycin injections into the hippocampus or amygdala may reflect different consequences for memory of perturbations of the neural system in which the manipulation is made.