David Bilkey (Department of Psychology and Brain Health Research Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand) | Changes in hippocampal plasticity, activity and memory in a rat model of schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia directly affects about 1% of the population. Many individuals with schizophrenia exhibit memory deficits and problems in constructing, maintaining, and processing the context of a situation. There is also evidence that the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with memory and contextual processing, has structural and biochemical abnormalities in individuals with schizophrenia. In this seminar I describe the use of a neurodevelopmental model of a schizophrenia risk factor to investigate whether an early environmental insult (maternal immune activation) is associated with abnormal neural activity in the adult hippocampus. A key question is how any abnormalities in neural processing might underlie deficits in contextual and memory processing.