霍华德休斯医学院Bernardo L. Sabatini研究团队近日取得一项新成果。经过不懈努力，他们报道了纹状体支持快速学习，但不支持记忆回忆。这一研究成果发表在2025年5月7日出版的国际学术期刊《自然》上。

动物学会在特定的感觉环境中进行运动动作来实现目标。纹状体与产生感觉-运动联系有关，但它对记忆形成和回忆的作用尚不清楚。为了研究纹状体在这些过程中的作用，研究人员教小鼠将视觉皮层纹状体投射神经元的光遗传激活与食物颗粒的可用性联系起来，这些食物颗粒可以通过前肢到达。作为指导学习的必要条件，纹状体神经活动编码了感觉环境和到达的结果。随着训练的进行，提示达到的速率增加了，但纹状体活动的短暂光遗传抑制阻碍了学习并阻止了性能的不断提高。

然而，同样的操作不会影响已经巩固为短期（少于1小时）或长期（天）记忆的性能改进。因此，纹状体的活动对于不断提高表现是必要的，从而导致大脑其他区域的可塑性，这些区域负责调节记忆的回忆。

附：英文原文

Title: Striatum supports fast learning but not memory recall

Author: Reinhold, Kimberly, Iadarola, Marci, Tang, Shi, Chang, Annabel, Kuwamoto, Whitney, Albanese, Madeline A., Sun, Senmiao, Hakim, Richard, Zimmer, Joshua, Wang, Wengang, Sabatini, Bernardo L.

Issue&Volume: 2025-05-07

Abstract: Animals learn to carry out motor actions in specific sensory contexts to achieve goals. The striatum has been implicated in producing sensory–motor associations1, yet its contributions to memory formation and recall are not clear. Here, to investigate the contribution of the striatum to these processes, mice were taught to associate a cue, consisting of optogenetic activation of striatum-projecting neurons in visual cortex, with the availability of a food pellet that could be retrieved by forelimb reaching. As necessary to direct learning, striatal neural activity encoded both the sensory context and the outcome of reaching. With training, the rate of cued reaching increased, but brief optogenetic inhibition of striatal activity arrested learning and prevented trial-to-trial improvements in performance. However, the same manipulation did not affect performance improvements already consolidated into short-term (less than 1h) or long-term (days) memories. Hence, striatal activity is necessary for trial-to-trial improvements in performance, leading to plasticity in other brain areas that mediate memory recall.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08969-1

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08969-1