The cellular, molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying the processing of proactive interference in the rat brain

Contrary to popular opinion forgetting can be useful: it will allow the filtering of non-essential information. The work of this thesis is to determine the biological basis of such adaptive forgetting, especially in the context of working memory (WM). We have adopted a comparative approach through the training of rats in a three behavioral tasks in a radial maze designed to test three distinct cognitive processes: the long-term memory, WM and treatment of proactive interference (PI). We have shown that information supposed to be stored in WM could last longer than necessary and interfere later with the storage of new information. Forgetting the first tests is therefore necessary to avoid PI. To understand the biological basis for this forgetting, we used three methodological approaches. We performed an immunohistochemical study aiming to understand what the brain region underlies the PI processing. This study showed that this processing requires inactivation of the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. We then performed Western blot analysis in order to identify the molecular processes underlying this inhibition. This study shows that, in the hippocampus, different synaptic plasticity processes may occur during treatment of PI. The third approach is to understand when this processing occurs. This study shows a slow sleep role in the treatment of PI