Venue: Centre Broca
Gisella Vetere
Cerebral codes and Circuits Connectivity team (C4 team), Brain Plasticity Unit, ESPCI PSL Paris (France)
https://veterelab.weebly.com
Invited by Jeremy Lesas (Herry’s team)
Title
Dissection of a memory engram to understand how associative memories are formed
Abstract
When an associative memory is formed? Which cells represent memories, and when are they engaged? In my laboratory, we are interested inn understanding memory formation and consolidation. To this aim we use techniques to visualize and tag cells with unprecedented temporal precision, to unravel their role in processing specific information present at the time of encoding. I will first show the possibility to implant fully artificial memories in mice just by optogenetically targeting codes the brain uses to process external information. I will then present new data from my lab where we identified non-overlapping dorsal CA1 neuronal ensembles that are differently active during associative fear memory acquisition. These ensembles disproportionately contribute to fear engram formation This study revealed, for the first time, the unique contribution of cells active at specified time points to the formation of a memory trace.
Selection of publications
1. Casanova JP, Pouget C, Treiber N, Agarwal I, Brimble MA, Vetere G Threat-dependent scaling of prelimbic dynamics to enhance fear representation Neuron. 2024 May.
2. Vetere G, Xia F, Ramsaran A, Tran L, Josselyn S, Frankland P. An inhibitory hippocampal–thalamic pathway modulates remote memory retrieval. Nature Neuroscience. 2021 May.
3. Vetere G, Tran L, Moberg S, Steadman P, Restivo L, Morrison F, Ressler K, Josselyn S, Frankland P. Memory formation in the absence of experience. Nature Neuroscience. 2019 Jun.
4. Vetere G, Kenney JW, Tran LM, Xia F, Steadman PE, Parkinson J, Josselyn SA, Frankland PW. Chemogenetic interrogation of a brainwide fear memory network in mice. Neuron. 2017 Apr.
5. Vetere G, Restivo L, Ross PJ, Ammassari-Teule M, Josselyn SA & Frankland PW. Spine growth in the anterior cingulate cortex is necessary for the consolidation of contextual fear memory PNAS, 2011 May.