Hippocampal area CA1 and remote memory in rats

Hippocampal lesions often produce temporally graded retrograde amnesia (TGRA), whereby recent memory is impaired more than remote memory. This finding has provided support for the process of systems consolidation. However, temporally graded memory impairment has not been observed with the watermaze task, and the findings have been inconsistent with context fear conditioning. One possibility is that large hippocampal lesions indirectly disrupt (by retrograde degeneration) the function of areas that project to the hippocampus that are important for task performance or thought to be important for storing consolidated memories. We developed a discrete lesion targeting area CA1, the sole output of the hippocampus to neocortex, and tested the effects of this lesion on recent and remote memory in the watermaze task, in context fear conditioning, and in trace fear conditioning. In all three tasks, recent and remote memory were similarly impaired after CA1 lesions. We discuss factors that help to illuminate these findings and consider their relevance to systems consolidation.