Persistent hippocampal traces of lifelong spatial memory

Two days of binary-tree maze training in Mus musculus leaves spatial memory that persists through repeated 90-day absences for up to a year, with direct runs to reward improved by a factor of 3.

• Why it matters: The work addresses how brief experiences can shape behavior for a lifetime despite continuous neural change, and whether hippocampal representations remain meaningfully stable.
• What they did: Mice were trained for 2 days, then returned after repeated 90-day absences while behavior was tracked; chronic calcium imaging in hippocampal CA1 followed the same neurons across visits.
• The result: Although most CA1 neurons shifted preferred locations, population activity at a given maze location resembled the 90-day-earlier pattern, especially near the reward, and better preservation of branching-level tuning correlated with earlier, more efficient navigation.

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