The hippocampal engram maps experience but not place

Episodic memories are encoded by a sparse population of hippocampal neurons. In mice, optogenetic manipulation of this memory engram established that these neurons are indispensable and inducing for memory recall. However, little is known about their in vivo activity or precise role in memory. We fo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2018-07, Vol.361 (6400), p.392-397
Main Authors: Tanaka, Kazumasa Z, He, Hongshen, Tomar, Anupratap, Niisato, Kazue, Huang, Arthur J Y, McHugh, Thomas J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action Potentials
Animals
Brain Mapping
c-Fos protein
CA1 Region, Hippocampal - cytology
CA1 Region, Hippocampal - physiology
Coding
Cognitive ability
Cognitive Mapping
Exploration
Fear of Success
Firing pattern
Gene mapping
Hippocampus
Memory
Memory, Episodic
Mental Recall
Mice
Mice, Transgenic
Neural coding
Neurons
Neurons - physiology
Optogenetics
Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-fos - analysis
Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-fos - genetics
Recall
Theta Rhythm
Theta rhythms
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Summary:Episodic memories are encoded by a sparse population of hippocampal neurons. In mice, optogenetic manipulation of this memory engram established that these neurons are indispensable and inducing for memory recall. However, little is known about their in vivo activity or precise role in memory. We found that during memory encoding, only a fraction of CA1 place cells function as engram neurons, distinguished by firing repetitive bursts paced at the theta frequency. During memory recall, these neurons remained highly context specific, yet demonstrated preferential remapping of their place fields. These data demonstrate a dissociation of precise spatial coding and contextual indexing by distinct hippocampal ensembles and suggest that the hippocampal engram serves as an index of memory content.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.aat5397