Abstract
Retrograde amnesia is the inability to remember events or information. The successful acquisition and memory of information is required before retrograde amnesia may occur. Often, the trigger for retrograde amnesia is a traumatic event. Loss of memories may be caused in two ways: either by loss/erasure of the memory itself or by the inability to access the memory, which is still present. In general, memories and learning are associated with a positive connotation although the extinction of unpleasant experiences and memories of traumatic events may be highly welcome. In contrast to the many experimental models addressing learning deficits caused by anterograde amnesia, the incapability to acquire new information, retrograde amnesia could so far only be investigated sporadically in human patients and in a limited number of model systems. Apart from models and diseases in which neurodegeneration or dementia like Alzheimer’s disease result in loss of memory, retrograde amnesia can be elicited by various drugs of which alcohol is the most prominent one and exemplifies the non-specific effects and the variable duration. External or internal impacts like traumatic brain injury, stroke, or electroconvulsive treatments may similarly result in variable degrees of retrograde amnesia. In this review, I will discuss a new genetic approach to induce retrograde amnesia in a mouse model and raise the hypothesis that retrograde amnesia is caused by altered intracellular calcium homeostasis. Recently, we observed that neuronal loss of neuroplastin resulted in retrograde amnesia specifically for associative memories. Neuroplastin is tightly linked to the expression of the main Ca2+ extruding pumps, the plasma membrane calcium ATPases (PMCAs). Therefore, neuronal loss of neuroplastin may block the retrieval and storage of associative memories by interference with Ca2+ signaling cascades. The possibility to elicit retrograde amnesia in a controlled manner allows to investigate the underlying mechanisms and may provide a deeper understanding of the molecular and circuit processes of memory.
Introduction
Retrograde amnesia is the backward loss of memories and is distinguished from forward anterograde amnesia, which is the inability to acquire new memories. Retrograde amnesia may be caused by a single specific traumatic event or it may accompany brain disorders or malfunctions. Traumatic events can be a direct impact by injury, viral or bacterial infections, malnutrition (Korsakoff’s syndrome), or psychoactive drugs and also psychogenic experiences (for review, see ). Memories can be affected by retrograde amnesia generally but also distinct types of memories such as associative memories may be selectively compromised. Usually, “normal” forgetting (), such as forgetting information without significance, is not referred to as retrograde amnesia although the mechanisms underlying forgetting and retrograde amnesia may not be distinct.
Forgetting relevant information and memory loss commonly have negative connotations. However, in cases of traumatic experiences or negatively connotated “bad” memories, forgetting may be highly welcome. Indeed, forgetting “negative” experiences and emphasizing “good” memories may help coping with life and generating optimism (). Furthermore, an increasing number of patients suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (according to the United States National Center for PTSD 7 or 8 out of 100 people will experience PTSD at some point in their live1). In particular, associative memories underlie post-traumatic stress disorder because the traumatic experience is linked to the memory of other stimuli/items/signals that later on may become triggers for the painful/traumatic recall.
In contrast to learning or memory acquisition studies, the literature on experimentally induced retrograde amnesia is very scarce. Besides studies of patients suffering from retrograde amnesia which often lead to rather anecdotal knowledge, experimental access to retrograde amnesia is very limited. Experimentally, retrograde amnesia can be induced by some psychoactive drugs from which alcohol is the most prominent (for review: ). However, the specificity and mechanisms of memory loss induced by psychoactive drugs are not precisely understood.
Recently, we observed in a genetically engineered mouse model, that the induced loss of neuroplastin resulted in retrograde amnesia of associative memories (). The very surprising finding that the specific loss of associative memories can be elicited by reduction of the expression of the protein neuroplastin from neurons will be reviewed here in detail.
Neuroplastin, a Cell Recognition Molecule of the Immunoglobulin Superfamily Acts Also as a Subunit of Plasma Membrane Calcium Atpases
Neuroplastin is a type I glycoprotein belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily (). Polymorphisms in the regulatory region of the human NPTN gene correlate with cortical thickness and intellectual abilities in adolescents () and were detected in individuals suffering from schizophrenia (). Recently, the NPTN gene has been associated with heart rate () and lung cancer (). Furthermore, neuroplastin is essential for hearing () and plays important roles in the immune system (). The adhesive and synaptic functions of neuroplastin and its role in neuronal plasticity were reviewed previously (; ; ). Our recent review summarizes the role of neuroplastin and its binding partners in molecular pathways underlying neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases such as schizophrenia, depression, or Alzheimer’s disease ().
Phylogenetically, an anchestor ortholog of the neuroplastin gene originated before divergence of vertebrates and invertebrates. In Drosophila, the single ortholog is designated basigin, however, it shares similar degrees of homology with the mammalian neuroplastin and basigin genes. A first gene duplication event gave rise to embigin and a second to neuroplastin and basigin yielding three paralogs in vertebrates. In mammals, the three paralogs neuroplastin, basigin (CD147, EMMPRIN and other names), and embigin comprise the small basigin gene family ().
The mammalian neuroplastin gene encodes four isoforms derived by alternative splicing of the exons encoding the first immunoglobulin (Ig 1) domain or a small peptide (DDEP) in the cytoplasmic part (Figure 1). The neuroplastin isoforms are designated according to the apparent molecular weight of the glycosylated proteins with Np65 referring to isoforms containing all three Ig-domains and Np55 referring to isoforms containing only Ig-domains 2 and 3. All isoforms have a single pass transmembrane domain and a short cytoplasmic domain of 34 or 38 amino acids depending on the insertion of the four amino acids DDEP (; ).
FIGURE 1
The neuroplastin gene is widely expressed in many organs but not in all cells. For example, neuroplastin is expressed in the brain by neurons but not by glia (
A variety of interaction partners for neuroplastin has been identified. In particular, interactions with the fibroblast growth factor (FGF) receptor (
Neuroplastin supports the expression of plasma membrane Ca2+ ATPases (PMCAs;
The functions of neuroplastin were also investigated using targeted mouse mutants with specific loss of only the Np65 isoform (
The Neuroplastin Mouse Model: A New Genetic Approach to Study Retrograde Amnesia
The generation of mouse mutants carrying a floxed neuroplastin gene (Figure 1;
Mouse mutants lacking neuroplastin completely (KO) display multiple general deficits such as a smaller body size, a reduced life expectancy, hormonal dysregulation, distinct behavioral abnormalities (Figure 1), hearing deficits, and the inability of neuroplastin-deficient male mice to reproduce (
The role of neuroplastin for associative memories was revealed in mice that were trained in the presence of neuroplastin and then loss of neuroplastin was induced (
The Calcium Hypothesis: A Potential Mechanism Underlying Retrograde Amnesia Caused by Neuroplastin Loss
Formation of associative memories requires the integration of information from different modalities: sensory input (e.g., reception of light stimulus, foot shock, environment -escape possibility) and emotional value (e.g., punishment foot shock, internal reward escape). This makes evident that different brain areas including cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, and more are involved and cooperate during learning and acquisition. However, it is not clear where the integration and storage are located and how the information is encoded. For associative memory formation, a critical role of disinhibition by cortical GABAergic interneurons has been proposed (for review,
As mentioned above, neuroplastin engages in numerous interactions with other molecules (for review:
It is tempting to speculate that the underlying cause for retrograde amnesia after neuroplastin reduction is an altered Ca2+-level. We and others have shown that neuroplastin interacts with PMCAs and that the reduction of neuroplastin is accompanied with reduction of PMCA proteins (
In the future, it should be examined whether neuroplastin expressed by gabaergic interneurons is the decisive component for memories and whether retrieval or storage or both are affected by neuroplastin loss.
Publisher’s Note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Statements
Author contributions
DM wrote the manuscript and designed the figure.
Funding
This work was supported by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF grant CONICYT to Eckart D. Gundelfinger, Karl-Heinz Smalla, Constanze Seidenbecher, and DM).
Acknowledgments
I thank Karla Sowa for expert technical assistance with the behavioral experiments. I am very grateful for the numerous and fruitful discussions with Soumee Bhattacharya and Rodrigo Herrera-Molina.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Summary
Keywords
retrograde amnesia, neuroplastin, PMCA, associative memory, memory loss, dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Citation
Montag D (2021) Retrograde Amnesia – A Question of Disturbed Calcium Levels?. Front. Cell. Neurosci. 15:746198. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2021.746198
Received
23 July 2021
Accepted
02 December 2021
Published
17 December 2021
Volume
15 - 2021
Edited by
Cecilia Hidalgo, University of Chile, Chile
Reviewed by
Suhita Nadkarni, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, India; Sorinel A. Oprisan, College of Charleston, United States
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© 2021 Montag.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Dirk Montag, montag@lin-magdeburg.de; orcid.org/0000-0002-4964-1330
This article was submitted to Cellular Neurophysiology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.