Your browser version may not work well with NCBI's Web applications. More information here...
1: Science. 2008 Feb 29;319(5867):1260-4. Epub 2008 Jan 24.
Related Articles, Links
Click here to read Click here to read
Transgenic inhibition of synaptic transmission reveals role of CA3 output in hippocampal learning.

Nakashiba T, Young JZ, McHugh TJ, Buhl DL, Tonegawa S.

Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center, Department of Biology and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

The hippocampus is an area of the brain involved in learning and memory. It contains parallel excitatory pathways referred to as the trisynaptic pathway (which carries information as follows: entorhinal cortex --> dentate gyrus --> CA3 --> CA1 --> entorhinal cortex) and the monosynaptic pathway (entorhinal cortex --> CA1 --> entorhinal cortex). We developed a generally applicable tetanus toxin-based method for transgenic mice that permits inducible and reversible inhibition of synaptic transmission and applied it to the trisynaptic pathway while preserving transmission in the monosynaptic pathway. We found that synaptic output from CA3 in the trisynaptic pathway is dispensable and the short monosynaptic pathway is sufficient for incremental spatial learning. In contrast, the full trisynaptic pathway containing CA3 is required for rapid one-trial contextual learning, for pattern completion-based memory recall, and for spatial tuning of CA1 cells.

Publication Types:
PMID: 18218862 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]