Neuroinflammation induces memory consolidation impairment that could be associated with changes in hippocampal structural plasticity

Mar del Plata

Congreso; XXXII CONGRESO ANUAL SAN 2017; 2017

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (SAN)

We previously reported that administration of IL-1beta (IL-1b) in dorsal hippocampus (DH) impaired contextual fear memory consolidation. We also showed that IL-1b administration produced a decrease in glutamate release from DH synaptosomes and decreased brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression after contextual fear conditioning. Besides, we established how these effects could be modulated by alpha-MSH. In this study we evaluated if IL-1b could induce changes in hippocampal structural plasticity. Ours results show that the impairment of contextual fear memory following the intrahippocampal IL-1b treatment was associated with a decrement in spine density in the DH. Also, we demonstrated that α-MSH prevented this effect. Besides, we studied the effect of the consumption of a high fat diet (HFD) during a short time (5 days) on memory consolidation and hippocampal spine density. HFD induce a decreased in memory consolidation without changes in total spine density in DH. Our data suggests that neuroinflammation induced by IL-1beta could interfere with structural plasticity associated with cognitive processes in DH.