Differential hippocampal gene expression is associated with climate-related natural variation in memory and the hippocampus in food-caching chickadees.

ABSTRACT: There is significant and often heritable variation in cognition and its underlying neural mechanisms, yet specific genetic contributions to such variation are not well characterized. Black-capped chickadees present a good model to investigate the genetic basis of cognition because they exhibit tremendous climate-related variation in memory, hippocampal morphology and neurogenesis rates throughout the North American continent, and these cognitive traits appear to have a heritable basis. We examined the hippocampal transcriptome profiles of laboratory-reared chickadees from the two most divergent populations to test whether differential gene expression in the hippocampus is associated with population differences in spatial memory, hippocampal morphology and adult hippocampal neurogenesis rat

SUBMITTER: Pravosudov VV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4120876 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature