Deficient neurogenesis in forebrain-specific presenilin-1 knockout mice is associated with reduced clearance of hippocampal memory traces.

To examine the in vivo function of presenilin-1 (PS1), we selectively deleted the PS1 gene in excitatory neurons of the adult mouse forebrain. These conditional knockout mice were viable and grew normally, but they exhibited a pronounced deficiency in enrichment-induced neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus. This reduction in neurogenesis did not result in appreciable learning deficits, indicating that addition of new neurons is not required for memory formation. However, our postlearning enrichment experiments lead us to postulate that adult dentate neurogenesis may play a role in the periodic clearance of outdated hippocampal memory traces after cortical memory consolidation, thereby ensuring that the hippocampus is continuously available to process new memories. A chronic, abnormal clearance process in the hippocampus may conceivably lead to memory disorders in the mammalian brain.

Differential effects of enrichment on learning and memory function in NR2B transgenic mice.

It has been known that environmental enrichment leads to better learning and memory in mice. However, the molecular mechanisms are not known. In this study, we used the 10th-12th of the NR2B transgenic (Tg) lines, in which the NMDA receptor function is enhanced via the NR2B subunit transgene in neurons of the forebrain, to test the hypothesis of the involvement of NMDA receptor function in enrichment-induced better learning and memory. Consistent with our previous results, both larger long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus and superior learning and memory were observed in naive NR2B Tg mice even after the 10th-12th generation of breeding. After enrichment, wild-type mice exhibited overall improvement in their performances in contextual and cued conditioning, fear extinctions, and novel object recognition tasks. Interestingly, the same enrichment procedures could not further increase the performance of NR2B Tg mice in contextual conditioning, cued conditioning, or fear extinction, thereby indicating that enhanced NMDA receptor function can occlude these enrichment effects. However, we found that in the novel object recognition task enriched NR2B Tg mice exhibited much longer recognition memory (up to 1 week), compared to that (up to 3 days) in naive NR2B Tg mice. Furthermore, our biochemical experiments showed that enrichment significantly increased protein levels of GluR1, NR2B, and NR2A subunits of glutamate receptors in both wild-type and NR2B Tg mice. Therefore, our results suggest an interactive nature of molecular pathways involved in both environmental and genetic NMDA receptor manipulations for enhancing learning and memory.

Enrichment induces structural changes and recovery from nonspatial memory deficits in CA1 NMDAR1-knockout mice.

We produced CA1-specific NMDA receptor 1 subunit-knockout (CA1-KO) mice to determine the NMDA receptor dependence of nonspatial memory formation and of experience-induced structural plasticity in the CA1 region. CA1-KO mice were profoundly impaired in object recognition, olfactory discrimination and contextual fear memories. Surprisingly, these deficits could be rescued by enriching experience. Using stereological electron microscopy, we found that enrichment induced an increase of the synapse density in the CA1 region in knockouts as well as control littermates. Therefore, our data indicate that CA1 NMDA receptor activity is critical in hippocampus-dependent nonspatial memory, but is not essential for experience-induced synaptic structural changes.