What is it about?
The dentate gyrus is a part of the hippocampus which plays critical roles in cognitive functions, such as learning, memory, and spatial coding, and its dysfunction is implicated in various neuropsychiatric disorders. However, it remains largely unknown how information is represented in this region. In this study, we recorded neuronal activity in the dentate gyrus in freely moving mice and analyzed this activity using machine learning.
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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Why is it important?
We found that multiple types of information (e.g., position, speed, and motion direction) are independently encoded in the overlapping, but different, populations of dentate gyrus neurons. Furthermore, in αCaMKII+/− mice, which present deficits in spatial memory, the neural representation of information about the position was selectively impaired, supporting the notion that different types of information are independently distributed among dDG neurons. This computational nature of the independent distribution of information in neural circuits is newly found not only in the dentate gyrus, but also in other hippocampal regions.
Perspectives
Our group has been working to reveal how the functions of dentate gyrus are impaired in disease conditions. We expect that this work will provide new ideas for understanding the function and dysfunction of the dentate gyrus in health and disease conditions.
Tomoyuki Murano
Fujita Health University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Multiple types of navigational information are independently encoded in the population activities of the dentate gyrus neurons, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2106830119.
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