Examinando por Autor "Taylor, Andrew Justin"

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    Study of memory consolidated in a social context
    (Universidad de Valparaíso, 2020) Taylor, Andrew Justin; Director de tesis: Dagnino Subiabre, Alexies
    Emotional memory consolidation has been one of the key investigated points in the last decade, understanding the underpinnings from its behavior to its molecular background. As fear memory consolidation has typically been focused on in research in the past decade, giving rise to its behavioral patterns such as freezing in rodent models and u nderstanding of sub-cortical structures involved such the Amygdala and its substructures in the moment of fear memory and hedonic memory consolidation, social memory which is given an emotional salience, has been overshadowed. This study aimed to answer the question of, if it is possible to study memory consolidation in a social context at the behavioral level. As the general objective was to study how memory is consolidated in a social context, the following specific aims of designing a behavioral paradigm to study memory consolidated in a social context, measuring memory consolidation, and measuring social preference, were planted. As the Pavlovian Condition Approach is applied to fear memory conditioning which analyzes behaviors such as avoidance and freezing, and hedonic memory which analyzes behaviors such as place of preference, this new behavioral paradigm, based on parameters of both Pavlovian fear memory and hedonic memory conditioning, analyzed memory consolidation observed by social preference which was quantified by latency, cumulative time, and frequency. In order to analyze these variables, with a remodified open field chamber, a four phase a setup was carried out with twelve Sprague Dawley rats. Additionally, a social avoidance preference test was used, with a pairing of the original twelve rats and three rats separated from the other litters at birth, to understand how memory consolidated in a social context, affected sociability with a new conspecific, in the aftermath. The findings showed that latency for only the afternoon of rats which represented 50%, of all rats, had a significant decrease, indicating memory consolidation, in only two trials. Additionally, cumulative time and frequency, which both, in overall, had no significant difference, indicating no specific place of social preference, hence motivation for a specific social interaction. Finally, findings were inconclusive for the last experiment that looked to understand how sociability is affected by previous memory consolidated in a social context; as there was no strong data to indicate that sociability had improved or worsened based on the previous social interaction. Finally, a neuronal mechanism was proposed to explain the underpinnings of this particular behavior, as well as a new behavioral paradigm that serves the purpose of a new line of investigation to help understand the neurobiology of social memory. Understanding social memory could help in understanding specifically why stress response in social interaction is different for some individuals, such as those on the autistic spectrum.