Role of TRPC channels in temporal association tasks

4 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1. Introduction: From neuron to temporal association task During the last decades, memory has gained even more interest in the neuroscientific field thanks to new instruments and techniques that allow us to explore the brain in depth. Even with various differences among species, it is an important cognitive function present in mammals. Most of the memory functions, like encoding and retrieval are known to be especially important (Squire & Zola-Morgan, 1991). In particular, this work will focus on the ability of these circuits in associating events separated in time, known as “temporal associative learning” (Kitamura, Macdonald & Tonegawa, 2015), trying to answer the following question: what makes the hippocampal area (Fig. 1) able to support the performance of such tasks? In the present chapter, the most recent theories about how the hippocampal area allows temporal associative learning will be explained, starting from single neuron channel properties. Dorsal Hippocampus Ventral Hippocampus Fig. 1. Dorsal hippocampus (blue) and ventral hippocampus (red) in mouse brain. Modiefied from Bannerman et al. (2014).