Erik Collins and Isabella Souvannarath, “Disrupted Social Information in the Lateral Entorhinal Cortex of a Mouse Model Of Schizophrenia”
Mentor: Jeffrey Lopez-Rojas, Psychology, Letters & Science (College of)
Poster #51
The entorhinal cortex (EC) is a multimodal association area and a key hub for declarative memory. One of its main subregions, the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC), has been identified to be an essential provider of social information to the CA2 region of the hippocampus, a brain area critical for social cognition. Specifically, the dorsal CA2 is involved in social recognition memory, defined as an individual’s ability to differentiate between novel and familiar conspecifics. Neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, are linked to morphological and functional abnormalities in both the LEC and CA2, which manifest into social cognition impairments. The Df(16)A+/- mouse model of schizophrenia mimics the 22q.11.2 microdeletion in humans, which is associated with learning disabilities and a high predisposition to schizophrenia. This allows for the simulation of alterations seen in patients with schizophrenia such as reduced dendritic spine density, diminished hippocampal and prefrontal connection, as well as memory impairments in this mouse model. The goal of this research is to investigate the alterations in LEC function for both male and female Df(16)A+/- mice and how these alterations influence social recognition memory. Behavioral tasks were implemented to assess social memory and were conducted while activity was recorded from dorsal CA2-projecting LEC neurons. We investigated if Df(16)A+/- animals exhibit gender-specific difficulties in recognizing novel and familiar conspecifics compared to wild-type animals, alongside abnormal LEC activity patterns correlated with impaired behavior. The conclusions drawn from this research contribute to the understanding of brain mechanisms behind social recognition memory between Df(16)A+/- and wild type mice, and highlight gender differences, which could inform future treatment possibilities targeting the LEC to alleviate symptoms of neuropsychological disorders like schizophrenia.