| First Author | Zeng H | Year | 2001 |
| Journal | Cell | Volume | 107 |
| Issue | 5 | Pages | 617-29 |
| PubMed ID | 11733061 | Mgi Jnum | J:73203 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:2154682 | Doi | 10.1016/s0092-8674(01)00585-2 |
| Citation | Zeng H, et al. (2001) Forebrain-Specific Calcineurin Knockout Selectively Impairs Bidirectional Synaptic Plasticity and Working/Episodic-like Memory. Cell 107(5):617-29 |
| abstractText | Calcineurin is a calcium-dependent protein phosphatase that has been implicated in various aspects of synaptic plasticity. By using conditional gene-targeting techniques, we created mice in which calcineurin activity is disrupted specifically in the adult forebrain. At hippocampal Schaffer collateral-CA1 synapses, LTD was significantly diminished, and there was a significant shift in the LTD/LTP modification threshold in mutant mice. Strikingly, although performance was normal in hippocampus-dependent reference memory tasks, including contextual fear conditioning and the Morris water maze, the mutant mice were impaired in hippocampus-dependent working and episodic-like memory tasks, including the delayed matching-to-place task and the radial maze task. Our results define a critical role for calcineurin in bidirectional synaptic plasticity and suggest a novel mechanistic distinction between working/episodic-like memory and reference memory. |
