For the first time in the world, a group at Osaka City University has revealed a series of flows in which various spatial information is distributed in the brain from the hippocampus to the four downstream brain regions via the hippocampus.
Information related to spatial cognition that is important for animal survival (for example, one's location, speed of movement, directions, etc.) is processed by the hippocampus in the brain, and then passes through the adjacent hippocampal formation, which is a group of various downstream brain regions. It is believed that it will be transmitted to.However, until now, it was not known how the information possessed by the hippocampus was specifically distributed and transmitted.
In order to clarify this communication mode, in this study, we combine large-scale electrophysiological measurement that records the activity of nerve cells using 256 multipoint electrodes and optogenetic method that causes nerve activity by light. Therefore, while measuring the nerve cell activity of the rat hippocampus all at once, the information transmission destinations of these nerve cells were comprehensively analyzed.As a result, the hippocampal formation has a robust information expression that is more resistant to noise than the hippocampus, and information on "movement speed" and "direction" is selectively transmitted to the brain regions of the cingulate cortex and nucleus accumbens, respectively. , It was clarified that the "location" information is evenly distributed in the four regions of the nucleus accumbens, thalamus, mammillary body, and cingulate cortex.This means that the hippocampal formation plays an important role in distributing and transmitting information according to the type of information and the target brain region.
The hippocampus is known as a brain region that is deeply involved not only in spatial information but also in memory formation and learning, and its functional decline can be a factor in dementia.The results of this research, which clarified how information is transmitted from the hippocampus to the downstream brain region, are also used to elucidate the operating principles of memory and learning systems centered on the hippocampus and to elucidate diseases caused by hippocampal dysfunction. It is expected to be connected.
Paper information:[Science Advances] Robust information routing by dorsal subiculum neurons
