Neuron
Volume 38, Issue 6, 19 June 2003, Pages 987-996
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Article
Cholinergic Neurotransmission Is Essential for Perirhinal Cortical Plasticity and Recognition Memory

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Abstract

We establish the importance of cholinergic neurotransmission to both recognition memory and plasticity within the perirhinal cortex of the temporal lobe. The muscarinic receptor antagonist scopolamine impaired the preferential exploration of novel over familiar objects, disrupted the normal reduced activation of perirhinal neurones to familiar compared to novel pictures, and blocked production of long-term depression (LTD) but not long-term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic transmission in perirhinal slices. The consistency of these effects across the behavioral, systems, and cellular levels of analysis provides strong evidence for the involvement of cholinergic mechanisms in synaptic plastic processes within perirhinal cortex that are necessary for recognition memory.

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1

Present address: School of Medicine and Biomedical Science, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2TN, United Kingdom.

2

Present address: School of Psychology, University of Cardiff, Cardiff, CF10 3YG, Wales, United Kingdom.