MEMORY FUNCTIONS OF ADULT NEUROGENESIS ARE MODULATED BY STRESS & SEX

Our poster for the 2015 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. Here, we looked at learning and memory in transgenic rats ("GFAP-TK") that lack adult neurogenesis. Since neurogenesis appears to be important for regulating stress-related emotional behaviors we tested rats learning ability in the spatial water maze at two temperatures (16C - high stress, 25C - low(er) stress) that differ in the degree of stress they evoke. We also compared male and female neurogenesis rats that lack neurogenesis since there are known sex differences in stress-related behaviors and hippocampal-dependent learning.