Facilitació de la memòria en rates: sistemes neurals d'activació general i arousal.

Over the preceeding years our laboratory has stablished behavioral models of learning and memory (two-way active avoidnce) facilitation by post-training brain electrical self-stimulation, in rats. We have shown that brain electrical self-stimulation facilitates memory formation matching the level of memory of poor learner animals with that of good learners. We have also observed significant interactions between pardoxical sleep and the same kind of learning task, also in rats. The results obtainde in our laboratory, as well as those reported by other researchers, suggest that paradoxical sleep deprivation can have detrimental effects upon memory formation. Based on our previous work, we are currently investigating the neural substratum involved on both types of facilitatory mechanisms. We have obtained some experimental data suggesting that the parafascicular nucleus of thalamus is invol