Center for Memory and Brain, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
Learn Mem. 2010 Feb 26;17(3):161-7. doi: 10.1101/lm.1685710. Print 2010 Mar.
"Transitive inference" refers to the ability to judge from memory the relationships between indirectly related items that compose a hierarchically organized series, and this capacity is considered a fundamental feature of relational memory. Here we explored the role of the prefrontal cortex in transitive inference by examining the performance of mice with selective damage to the medial prefrontal cortex. Damage to the infralimbic and prelimbic regions resulted in significant impairment in the acquisition of a series of overlapping odor discrimination problems, such that animals with prefrontal lesions required twice as many trials to learn compared to sham-operated controls. Following eventually successful acquisition, animals with medial prefrontal lesions were severely impaired on a transitive inference probe test, whereas they performed as well as controls on a test that involved a nontransitive judgment from a novel odor pairing. These results suggest that the prefrontal cortex is part of an integral hippocampal-cortical network essential for relational memory organization.
“传递推理”是指根据记忆判断由组成层次结构系列的间接相关项目之间的关系的能力，这种能力被认为是关系记忆的基本特征。在这里，我们通过检查选择性损伤内侧前额叶皮层的小鼠的表现来探索前额叶皮层在传递推理中的作用。损伤内嗅皮层和前扣带皮层导致在一系列重叠的气味辨别问题的习得中出现显著障碍，以至于前额叶损伤的动物需要两倍于假手术对照的试验次数来学习。在最终成功习得后，内侧前额叶损伤的动物在传递推理探针测试中严重受损，而在涉及从新气味配对进行非传递性判断的测试中，它们的表现与对照组一样好。这些结果表明，前额叶皮层是海马-皮层网络的一个组成部分，对于关系记忆组织是必不可少的。
