Recalling a salient experience provokes specific behaviors and changes in the physiology or internal state. Relatively little is known about how physiological memories are encoded. We examined the neural substrates of physiological memory by probing CRH^PVN neurons of mice, which control the endocrine response to stress. Here we show these cells exhibit contextual memory following exposure to a stimulus with negative or positive valence. Specifically, a negative stimulus invokes a two-factor learning rule that favors an increase in the activity of weak cells during recall. In contrast, the contextual memory of positive valence relies on a one-factor rule to decrease activity of CRH^PVN neurons. Finally, the aversive memory in CRH^PVN neurons outlasts the behavioral response. These observations provide information about how specific physiological memories of aversive and appetitive experience are represented and demonstrate that behavioral readouts may not accurately reflect physiological changes invoked by the memory of salient experiences.

回忆显着的经历会引发特定的行为以及生理或内部状态的变化。关于生理记忆是如何编码的，人们知之甚少。我们通过探测小鼠的 CRH ^PVN神经元来检查生理记忆的神经基质，这些神经元控制着应激的内分泌反应。在这里，我们展示了这些细胞在暴露于负价或正价刺激后表现出情境记忆。具体来说，负面刺激会引发双因素学习规则，有利于在回忆过程中增加弱细胞的活动。相比之下，正价的上下文记忆依赖于单因素规则来降低 CRH ^PVN神经元的活动。最后，CRH ^PVN神经元中的厌恶记忆比行为反应更持久。这些观察提供了有关如何表示厌恶和食欲经历的特定生理记忆的信息，并证明行为读数可能无法准确反映显着经历记忆引起的生理变化。