Laboratory of the Neurophysiology of Memory, Institute of Physiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia.
Front Neural Circuits. 2021 Apr 28;15:634533. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2021.634533. eCollection 2021.
It is well known that communication between the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the ventral hippocampus (vHPC) is critical for various cognitive and behavioral functions. However, the exact role of these structures in spatial coordination remains to be clarified. Here we sought to determine the involvement of the mPFC and the vHPC in the spatial retrieval of a previously learned active place avoidance task in adult male Long-Evans rats, using a combination of unilateral and bilateral local muscimol inactivations. Moreover, we tested the role of the vHPC-mPFC pathway by performing combined ipsilateral and contralateral inactivations. Our results showed not only bilateral inactivations of either structure, but also the combined inactivations impaired the retrieval of spatial memory, whereas unilateral one-structure inactivations did not yield any effect. Remarkably, muscimol injections in combined groups exerted similar deficits, regardless of whether the inactivations were contralateral or ipsilateral. These findings confirm the importance of these structures in spatial cognition and emphasize the importance of the intact functioning of the vHPC-mPFC pathway.
众所周知，内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）和腹侧海马体（vHPC）之间的通讯对于各种认知和行为功能至关重要。然而，这些结构在空间协调中的确切作用仍有待阐明。在这里，我们使用单侧和双侧局部 muscimol 失活的方法，试图确定 mPFC 和 vHPC 在成年雄性 Long-Evans 大鼠先前学习的主动回避任务的空间检索中的作用。此外，我们通过进行同侧和对侧联合失活来测试 vHPC-mPFC 通路的作用。我们的结果不仅显示了这两个结构的双侧失活，而且还显示了联合失活损害了空间记忆的检索，而单侧一个结构的失活则没有产生任何影响。值得注意的是，在联合组中，muscimol 注射产生了相似的缺陷，无论失活是对侧还是同侧。这些发现证实了这些结构在空间认知中的重要性，并强调了 vHPC-mPFC 通路的完整功能的重要性。
