Instituto de Fisiología, and Centro de Neurobiología y Fisiopatología Integrativa, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Valparaíso, 2340000 Valparaíso, Chile.
Centro Integrativo de Neurociencias y Departamento de Psiquiatría, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 8330024 Santiago, Chile.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Jul 3;115(27):7123-7128. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1720117115. Epub 2018 Jun 18.
Learning the location of relevant places in the environment is crucial for survival. Such capacity is supported by a distributed network comprising the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, yet it is not fully understood how these structures cooperate during spatial reference memory formation. Hence, we examined neural activity in the prefrontal-hippocampal circuit in mice during acquisition of spatial reference memory. We found that interregional oscillatory coupling increased with learning, specifically in the slow-gamma frequency (20 to 40 Hz) band during spatial navigation. In addition, mice used both spatial and nonspatial strategies to navigate and solve the task, yet prefrontal neuronal spiking and oscillatory phase coupling were selectively enhanced in the spatial navigation strategy. Lastly, a representation of the behavioral goal emerged in prefrontal spiking patterns exclusively in the spatial navigation strategy. These results suggest that reference memory formation is supported by enhanced cortical connectivity and evolving prefrontal spiking representations of behavioral goals.
学习环境中相关地点的位置对于生存至关重要。这种能力由包括前额叶皮层和海马体在内的分布式网络支持，但目前尚不清楚这些结构在空间参照记忆形成过程中如何合作。因此，我们在小鼠中检查了前额叶-海马回路在空间参照记忆获取过程中的神经活动。我们发现，区域间的振荡耦合随着学习而增加，特别是在空间导航过程中的慢伽马频率（20 到 40 Hz）频段。此外，小鼠使用空间和非空间策略进行导航并解决任务，但在空间导航策略中，前额叶神经元的尖峰和振荡相位耦合被选择性增强。最后，行为目标的表示仅在空间导航策略中出现在前额叶尖峰模式中。这些结果表明，参考记忆的形成是通过增强的皮质连接和不断发展的行为目标的前额叶尖峰表示来支持的。
