This is neuroscience! i need a detailed answer A Morris water maze experiment wa

Question

This is neuroscience! i need a detailed answer

A Morris water maze experiment was done to show that African nice have a lower threshold for making long term memories than New England mice do.

Since the mice from African have a difference in their memory abilities (New england mice can make long term memories better than they can), you then want to determine if they use the same mechanisms for long term memory as your mice in New England. So, you perfuse the brain of one group of African Mice with AP-5 (a chemical that inhibits NMDA receptors), and you inject a toxin that blocks protein synthesis in the brain of a different group of Afrian Mice. You then repeat your Morris Water Maze experiment, and obtain the following results:

Using this data and what you know about long term memory formation, compare and contrast the formation of long term spatial memory in the African mice to what you would expect for these same conditions in a New England mouse (assume that New England mice form memories in a normal manner).

Explanation / Answer

NMDA receptor is required for long term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus, amygdala, medial septum. It helps in long term memory formation. Now, in this case when mice were treated with AP-5, it act as antagonists for both the mice (African as well as New England). The drug does not effect synaptic transmission, but prevents induction of LTP. It thereby results in impairing the acquisition of place learning in the Morris water maze.

Again, it has been seen concluded that pharmacological manipulations in mice makes NMDA receptor to be important for inducing memory formation, but not for maintenance of memories. Therefore, after learning a task if NMDA receptor is blocked,memory performance is not effected whereas, before learning a task if NMDA receptor is blocked it resulted in impaired memory. In African mice, where there is low threshold for making long term memory, once NMDA receptors are blocked, it impairs spatial learning. In New England mice, which can already make better long term memory, once a task is learned, it will efficiently make long term memory in a short time and there after when the NMDA receptor is blocked it will have lesser impact in spatial memory.

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