Publication Date:
2014-04-18
Description:
Accumulating evidence points to cortical oscillations as a mechanism for mediating interactions among functionally specialized neurons in distributed brain circuits. A brain function that may use such interactions is declarative memory--that is, memory that can be consciously recalled, such as episodes and facts. Declarative memory is enabled by circuits in the entorhinal cortex that interface the hippocampus with the neocortex. During encoding and retrieval of declarative memories, entorhinal and hippocampal circuits are thought to interact via theta and gamma oscillations, which in awake rodents predominate frequency spectra in both regions. In favour of this idea, theta-gamma coupling has been observed between entorhinal cortex and hippocampus under steady-state conditions in well-trained rats; however, the relationship between interregional coupling and memory formation remains poorly understood. Here we show, by multisite recording at successive stages of associative learning, that the coherence of firing patterns in directly connected entorhinal-hippocampus circuits evolves as rats learn to use an odour cue to guide navigational behaviour, and that such coherence is invariably linked to the development of ensemble representations for unique trial outcomes in each area. Entorhinal-hippocampal coupling was observed specifically in the 20-40-hertz frequency band and specifically between the distal part of hippocampal area CA1 and the lateral part of entorhinal cortex, the subfields that receive the predominant olfactory input to the hippocampal region. Collectively, the results identify 20-40-hertz oscillations as a mechanism for synchronizing evolving representations in dispersed neural circuits during encoding and retrieval of olfactory-spatial associative memory.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Igarashi, Kei M -- Lu, Li -- Colgin, Laura L -- Moser, May-Britt -- Moser, Edvard I -- England -- Nature. 2014 Jun 5;510(7503):143-7. doi: 10.1038/nature13162. Epub 2014 Apr 16.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for Neural Computation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Olav Kyrres gate 9, MTFS, 7491 Trondheim, Norway. ; Center for Learning and Memory, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712-0805, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24739966" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Cues
;
Entorhinal Cortex/cytology/*physiology
;
Exploratory Behavior/physiology
;
Hippocampus/cytology/*physiology
;
Learning/*physiology
;
Male
;
Memory/physiology
;
Models, Neurological
;
Neurons/physiology
;
Odors/analysis
;
Rats
;
Rats, Long-Evans
;
Smell
;
Space Perception/physiology
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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