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Access through your institution Buy or subscribe The way we feel about a past experience can change over time while other details of the memory remain intact. The cellular mechanisms
underlying this phenomenon are not well understood, although we know that the emotional aspects and the spatial contexts of memories are encoded by the amygdala and the hippocampus,
respectively. In a new optogenetics-based study, Tonegawa and colleagues artificially altered the emotional valence of a memory in mice and show that this probably involves a change in the
connectivity between hippocampal and amygdalar memory traces. After Dox was removed from the diet, the animals underwent either contextual fear conditioning or reward conditioning. In both
groups, the procedure resulted in the creation of a memory trace (that is, an 'engram') of activated, ChR2-expressing, mCherry-labelled neurons in both the DG and the BLA. The mice
were then put back on Dox to prevent further ChR2 expression. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through your institution Subscribe
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customer support REFERENCES * Redondo, R. L. et al. Bidirectional switch of the valence associated with a hippocampal contextual memory engram. _Nature_ http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13725
(2014) Download references Authors * Leonie Welberg View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions
ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Welberg, L. Uncoupling memory traces. _Nat Rev Neurosci_ 15, 629 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3828 Download citation * Published: 10 September 2014
* Issue Date: October 2014 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3828 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Sorry, a
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