The Object Recognition Task: A New Proposal for the Memory Performance Study

In the last few decades, there has been extensive research in the cognitive neurophysiology of learning and memory. Most relevant experimental studies were focused on the possible role of neuropeptides on memory performance and the neurobiological bases of their actions. In general, scientists believe that the answers to those questions relies in understanding how the information about new events is acquired and coded by neurons, how this information is modulated and if it is possible to revert age-related or diseases associated cognitive to failures. Memory is broadly divided into declarative and nondeclarative forms. The formation of declarative memory depends on a neural system anatomically connected in the medial temporal lobe that recruits hippocampus, dentate gyrus, the subicular complex, and the adjacent perirhinal, entorhinal, and parahippocampal cortices) (Squire & Zola-Morgan, 1991; Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2001). In both, animals and humans, declarative memory supports the capacity to recollect facts and events and can be contrasted with a collection of nondeclarative memory abilities: habits and skills, simple forms of conditioning, and other ways that the effects of experience can be expressed through performance rather than recollection (Squire, 1992; Schacter & Tulving, 1994). Numerous tests have been used for studying memory; they differ in several ways other than just the type of information that must be remembered. Other differences include the nature of the motivation or reward, the reinforcement contingencies, and the amount of training required. The behaviors that are measured to assess memory also vary considerably and include conditioned reflexes (e.g., Pavlovian fear conditioning), speed or accuracy of spatial navigation (which can involve either swimming -water mazeor running -radial maze-). The object recognition test (e.g., novel object recognition -NORor novel object preference -NOP), also known as the visual paired comparison task in studies with humans and monkeys, is a non-spatial and non-aversive procedure extensively applied to study neuronanatomical and molecular mechanism involves in recognition memory process, a form of declarative memory (Ennaceur & Delacour, 1988; Puma et al., 1999; Bizot et al., 2005). Recognition memory is a fundamental facet of our ability to remember. It requires a capacity for both identification and judgment of the prior occurrence of what has been identified (Mandler, 1980). This memory includes two components, a recollective (episodic) component that supports the ability to remember the episode in which an item was encountered, and a familiarity component that supports the ability to know that an item was presented (Mandler,