Madeline Jereb, Dakota Gordon, and Anna Knight, “Entorhinal Cortex In Social Memory”
Mentor: Jeffery Lopez-Rojas, Psychology
Poster #12
Social memory deficits are present in severe neuropsychiatric disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and schizophrenia. Social memory encompasses recollection of social contexts, such as individuals and events, which allows for the recognition of conspecifics. The entorhinal cortex (EC) is crucial for sending sensory information to the hippocampus for memory consolidation, notably social memory. It is divided into the medial entorhinal cortex and the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC). The hippocampal region CA2 receives social memory information primarily from the LEC. This study investigates how neural activity from the LEC is associated with social memory encoding and recall. Miniscope technology recorded calcium imaging of freely behaving mice expressing GCaMP6f in EC-CA2 projections via viral injections. In behavioral experiments, wild-type mice spent more time interacting with novel stimulus mice compared to familiar mice. Further research will be needed to investigate correlations between neural activity of the EC and social interaction in schizophrenic model mice, which will highlight its impairments in social information processing. Researching more into these neural connections will help discover treatments and preventive measures for neuropsychiatric disorders.