Frisch C, Hasenöhrl R U, Haas H L, Weiler H T, Steinbusch H W, Huston J P
Institute of Physiological Psychology and Center for Biological and Medical Research, Heinrich-Heine-University of Düsseldorf, Germany.
Exp Brain Res. 1998 Feb;118(4):447-56. doi: 10.1007/s002210050301.
The tuberomammillary nucleus (TM) located in the posterior part of the hypothalamus is the main source of neuronal histamine in the central nervous system. Recent work from our laboratories has indicated an involvement of the TM region in neuronal plasticity and reinforcement processes. In the present study, we investigated the effects of TM lesions on the performance of adult and aged Wistar rats in a set of learning tasks, which differed in terms of complexity and reward contingencies (habituation learning, inhibitory avoidance, discrimination learning, Morris water maze). An improvement was found in every test applied, indicating that TM lesions seem to generally enhance learning and memory capacities independent of the special demands of a given task. Age-related learning deficits were strongly diminished. Immunohistochemistry revealed that the excitotoxic lesions used to destroy the TM region led to a marked decrease in the number of histamine-positive neurons in the vicinity of the injection site, indicating an involvement of the brain histaminergic system in the observed behavioral changes.
位于下丘脑后部的结节乳头体核（TM）是中枢神经系统中神经元组胺的主要来源。我们实验室最近的研究表明，TM区域参与了神经元可塑性和强化过程。在本研究中，我们调查了TM损伤对成年和老年Wistar大鼠在一系列学习任务中的表现的影响，这些任务在复杂性和奖励条件方面有所不同（习惯化学习、抑制性回避、辨别学习、莫里斯水迷宫）。在应用的每项测试中都发现了改善，这表明TM损伤似乎总体上增强了学习和记忆能力，而与特定任务的特殊要求无关。与年龄相关的学习缺陷大大减少。免疫组织化学显示，用于破坏TM区域的兴奋性毒性损伤导致注射部位附近组胺阳性神经元数量显著减少，表明脑组胺能系统参与了观察到的行为变化。
