Towards unravelling the neuropeptidergic regulation of associative long term memory

Understanding how the brain processes environmental stimuli into adaptive behaviours is still an open challenge for neuroscientists. Since the ability to learn from prior experiences evolved early in evolution, the “mini-brain” of the small roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans has proven to be ideally suited to address fundamental neurobiological questions. Among all de novo synthesised proteins that play a crucial role in establishing long-term memory (LTM), the cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) is one of the best known. Direct in vivo monitoring of the activation of CREB-dependent GFP reporters during associative memory formation eliminates the large variability in results that is typical for current behavioural assays and promises high throughput screening of hundreds of genes. This technique is used to determine the involvement of neuropeptides and their receptors in memory formation and retrieval, enabling a fast and reliable screening paradigm. The obtained information on the underlying neuropeptidergic pathways will shed light on the cellular and molecular networks that encode and integrate environmental and internal cues into long-term memory.status: publishe