The overall goal of the proposed research is to identify and characterize the neurophysiological substrates of certain context-appropriate behaviors. Since the learning context plays an important role in normal learning and memory, developing an understanding of the neuronal mechanisms that underlie context-specific behavior is an important step towards understanding how the brain processes information for future use. More specifically, this project seeks to test the hypothesis that the hippocampus signals contextual information to the cingulothalamic system to produce special patterns of neuronal activity that mediate context appropriate associations and behaviors in a discrimination learning paradigm. This will be accomplished by recording the activity of neurons in cingulothalamic circuitry and the behavior of control rabbits and rabbits with temporary and permanent lesions of the hippocampus while they perform two different discriminative learning tasks in different environments.
| Smith, David M; Wakeman, Derek; Patel, Jay et al. (2004) Fornix lesions impair context-related cingulothalamic neuronal patterns and concurrent discrimination learning in rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus). Behav Neurosci 118:1225-39 |
| Smith, David M; Freeman Jr, John H; Nicholson, Daniel et al. (2002) Limbic thalamic lesions, appetitively motivated discrimination learning, and training-induced neuronal activity in rabbits. J Neurosci 22:8212-21 |
| Smith, D M; Monteverde, J; Schwartz, E et al. (2001) Lesions in the central nucleus of the amygdala: discriminative avoidance learning, discriminative approach learning, and cingulothalamic training-induced neuronal activity. Neurobiol Learn Mem 76:403-25 |
