Long-Term Memory Dysfunction in Limbic Encephalitis

Long-Term Memory Dysfunction in Limbic Encephalitis Niels Hansen1,2* 1Department of Epileptology, University of Bonn Medical Center, Bonn, Germany2Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany Limbic encephalitis (LE) is an autoimmune disease defined by clinical criteria, such as seizures, psychiatric and in particular working memory abnormalities in conjunction with apparative criteria underlying structural or functional changes in the temporal lobe according to autoimmune encephalitis guidelines (1). Working memory encompasses a transient encoding of information in readiness for further processing within a time window of seconds during cognitive task operations based on neurophysiological mechanisms, such as short-term synaptic facilitation (2). On the contrary, long-term memory (LTM) serves to encode, consolidate, and finally store information for long intervals ranging from minutes to months or even life (3) through cellular mechanisms, such as long-term potentiation (LTP) (4). In translational transfer experiments of autoimmune encephalitis from humans to the mouse, critical impairment of synaptic LTP in the hippocampus was proved by autoantibodies against the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) (5) and alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptor subunit GluA2 (6). Synaptic LTP in the hippocampus is considered to be a mechanism of synaptic consolidation (7) serving to enable LTM storag...
Source: Frontiers in Neurology - Category: Neurology Source Type: research