Late post-learning participation of entorhinal cortex in memory processes

Mice of the BALB/c strain were bilaterally implanted with electrodes in the lateral entorhinal cortex (EC) in order to study the influence of post-trial EC stimulation on memory. The learning task was a food reinforced operant conditioning. At one of several time intervals after a first learning session, the experimental groups were stimulated for 80 s with subseizure current intensity. Testing was carried out 24 h later. In the first experiment, a continuous reinforcement schedule was used. EC stimulation had no effect when applied at the 30-s or 3-h intervals, but surprisingly a 30-min delayed stimulation greatly improved retention compared to performance of non-stimulated animals. In the second experiment, the same paradigm was used in a discriminative operant conditioning task. The same facilitation on retention was observed only with the 30-min delayed stimulation. Compared to previous data with hippocampal or hypothalamic stimulation, the present results reveal that EC is lately involved in memory processes.