Hippocampal Neurogenesis Regulates Forgetting During Adulthood and Infancy

Katherine G. Akers, Alonso Martinez-Canabal, Leonardo Restivo, Adelaide P. Yiu, Antonietta De Cristofaro, Hwa-Lin Hsiang, Anne L. Wheeler, Axel Guskjolen, Yosuke Niibori, Hirotaka Shoji, Koji Ohira, Blake A. Richards, Tsuyoshi Miyakawa, Sheena A. Josselyn, Paul W. Frankland

Throughout life, new neurons are continuously added to the dentate gyrus. As this continuous addition remodels hippocampal circuits, computational models predict that neurogenesis leads to degradation or forgetting of established memories. Consistent with this, increasing neurogenesis after the formation of a memory was sufficient to induce forgetting in adult mice. By contrast, during infancy, when hippocampal neurogenesis levels are high and freshly generated memories tend to be rapidly forgotten (infantile amnesia), decreasing neurogenesis after memory formation mitigated forgetting. In precocial species, including guinea pigs and degus, most granule cells are generated prenatally. Consistent with reduced levels of postnatal hippocampal neurogenesis, infant guinea pigs and degus did not exhibit forgetting. However, increasing neurogenesis after memory formation induced infantile amnesia in these species.