Biogenic amines and their role in aversive and appetitive learning

Abstract

One of the major goals in the study of the neural basis of learning and memory is to understand how the stimuli that constitute an experience are represented in the brain to produce the changes that yield a new memory. To this, studies that combine animal behaviour with pharmacology, molecular biology and physiology are carried out taking advantage of technical possibilities available in different model species, and also inspired by comparative and evolutionary interests. In this context, the crab Neohelice granulata has been established as a consolidated invertebrate model. The lack of an endothelial blood-brain barrier, and the fact that after a systemic injection, drugs are distributed from the pericardial sac directly into neuropils of the central brain (Abbott 1970), confer Neohelice advantages for the pharmacological approach to the study of the neural basis of behavior (Maldonado et al. 1997, Romano et al. 2006, Tomsic and Maldonado 1990).