A novel behavioral paradigm to model hypermemory-like features in rats.

Episodic memory is essential to everyday life and personal identity, but its dysfunction can affect mental health. Translational animal models for investigating these dysfunctions remain limited, particularly for abnormally enhanced memories. We developed a paradigm to induce hypermemory-like features in adult male and female rats using object recognition (OR) and object location (OL) tasks mimicking the rumination-like component of hypermemory. During odor-context association training, rats explored two identical objects with a cinnamon scent. Over the following 6h, they received 12 brief re-