Changes in striatal procedural memory coding correlate with learning deficits in a mouse model of Huntington disease.

ABSTRACT: In hereditary neurodegenerative Huntington disease (HD), early cognitive impairments before motor deficits have been hypothesized to result from dysfunction in the striatum and cortex before degeneration. To test this hypothesis, we examined the firing properties of single cells and local field activity in the striatum and cortex of pre-motor-symptomatic R6/1 transgenic mice while they were engaged in a procedural learning task, the performance on which typically depends on the integrity of striatum and basal ganglia. Here, we report that a dramatically diminished recruitment of the vulnerable striatal projection cells, but not local interneurons, of R6/1 mice in coding for the task, compared with WT littermates, is associated with severe deficits in procedural learning. In addition, both

SUBMITTER: Cayzac S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3107308 | biostudies-literature | 2011 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature