Sharp wave‐associated activity patterns of cortical neurons in the mouse piriform cortex

The olfactory piriform cortex (PC) is thought to participate in olfactory associative memory. Like the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory, it belongs to an evolutionally conserved paleocortex and comprises a three‐layered cortical structure. During slow‐wave sleep, the olfactory PC...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The European journal of neuroscience 2018-11, Vol.48 (10), p.3246-3254
Main Authors: Katori, Kazuki, Manabe, Hiroyuki, Nakashima, Ai, Dunfu, Eer, Sasaki, Takuya, Ikegaya, Yuji, Takeuchi, Haruki
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activity patterns
Cortex (olfactory)
Coyotes
Ethyl carbamate
Hippocampus
memory replay
multi‐unit recording
Neuroplasticity
Odor
olfactory cortex sharp wave
olfactory piriform cortex
Paleocortex
Piriform cortex
Sleep
spontaneous neural activity
Synaptic plasticity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The olfactory piriform cortex (PC) is thought to participate in olfactory associative memory. Like the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory, it belongs to an evolutionally conserved paleocortex and comprises a three‐layered cortical structure. During slow‐wave sleep, the olfactory PC becomes less responsive to external odor stimuli and instead displays sharp wave (SPW) activity similar to that observed in the hippocampus. Neural activity patterns during hippocampal SPW have been intensively studied in terms of memory consolidation; however, little is known about the activity patterns of olfactory cortical neurons during olfactory cortex sharp waves (OC‐SPWs). In this study, we recorded multi‐unit neural activities in the anterior PC in urethane‐anesthetized mice. We found that the activity patterns of olfactory cortical neurons during OC‐SPWs were non‐randomly organized. Individual olfactory cortical neurons varied in the timings of their peak firing rates during OC‐SPW events. Moreover, specific pairs of olfactory cortical neurons were more frequently activated together than expected by chance. On the basis of these observations, we speculate that coordinated activation of specific subsets of olfactory cortical neurons repeats during OC‐SPWs, thereby facilitating synaptic plasticity underlying the consolidation of olfactory associative memories. We found that the neural activities during sharp waves in the piriform cortex are not random but actually coordinated. This finding might give some suggestions to the function of the piriform cortex as an association cortex.
ISSN:0953-816X
1460-9568
DOI:10.1111/ejn.14099