AI Article Synopsis

  • Hippocampal afferent inputs help differentiate between 'what' (item identity) and 'where' (spatial location) in spatial representations, with support from the retrosplenial cortex (RSC).
  • Learning enhances hippocampal long-term depression (LTD), particularly in the CA1 region, where item-place features of the environment are crucial.
  • The study used fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to show that learning-facilitated LTD activates specific neuronal populations in the hippocampus and RSC, highlighting a new role for the RSC in encoding item-place learning.

Article Abstract

Hippocampal afferent inputs, terminating on proximal and distal subfields of the cornus ammonis (CA), enable the functional discrimination of 'what' (item identity) and 'where' (spatial location) elements of a spatial representation. This kind of information is supported by structures such as the retrosplenial cortex (RSC). Spatial content learning promotes the expression of hippocampal synaptic plasticity, particularly long-term depression (LTD). In the CA1 region, this is specifically facilitated by the learning of item-place features of a spatial environment. Gene-tagging, by means of time-locked fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to detect nuclear expression of immediate early genes, can reveal neuronal populations that engage in experience-dependent information encoding. In the current study, using FISH, we examined if learning-facilitated LTD results in subfield-specific information encoding in the hippocampus and RSC. Rats engaged in novel exploration of small items during stimulation of Schaffer collateral-CA1 synapses. This resulted in LTD (> 24 h). FISH, to detect nuclear expression of Homer1a, revealed that the distal-CA1 and proximal-CA3 subcompartments were particularly activated by this event. By contrast, all elements of the proximodistal cornus ammonis-axis showed equal nuclear Homer1a expression following LTD induction solely by means of afferent stimulation. The RSC exhibited stronger nuclear Homer1a expression in response to learning-facilitated LTD, and to novel item-place experience, compared to LTD induced by sole afferent stimulation in CA1. These results show that both the cornus ammonis and RSC engage in differentiated information encoding of item-place learning that is salient enough, in its own right, to drive the expression of hippocampal LTD. These results also reveal a novel role of the RSC in item-place learning.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10978647PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00429-023-02694-zDOI Listing

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