Summary The hippocampus is critical for encoding declarative memory, our repository of knowledge of who, what, where, and when1. Mnemonic information is processed in the hippocampus through several parallel routes involving distinct subregions. In the classic trisynaptic pathway, information proceeds from entorhinal cortex (EC) to dentate gyrus (DG) to CA3 and then to CA1, the main hippocampal output2. Genetic lesions of EC3 and hippocampal DG4, CA35, and CA16 regions have revealed their distinct functions in learning and memory. In contrast, little is known about the role of CA2, a relatively small area interposed between CA3 and CA1 that forms the nexus of a powerful disynaptic circuit linking EC input with CA1 output7. Here, we report a novel transgenic mouse line that enabled us to selectively examine the synaptic connections and behavioral role of the CA2 region in adult mice. Genetically targeted inactivation of CA2 pyramidal neurons caused a pronounced loss of social memory, the ability of an animal to remember a conspecific, with no change in sociability or several other hippocampal-dependent behaviors, including spatial and contextual memory. These behavioral and anatomical results thus reveal CA2 as a critical hub of sociocognitive memory processing.

The cortico-hippocampal circuit is critical for storage of associational memories. Most studies have focused on the role in memory storage of the excitatory projections from entorhinal cortex to hippocampus. However, entorhinal cortex also sends inhibitory projections, whose role in memory storage and cortico-hippocampal activity remains largely unexplored. We found that these long-range inhibitory projections enhance the specificity of contextual and object memory encoding. At the circuit level, the GABAergic projections act as a disinhibitory gate that transiently promotes the excitation of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons by suppressing feedforward inhibition. This enhances the ability of CA1 neurons to fire synaptically-evoked dendritic spikes and generate a temporally precise form of heterosynaptic plasticity. Long-range inhibition from entorhinal cortex may thus increase the precision of hippocampal-based longterm memory associations by assessing the salience of mnemonic information to the immediate sensory input.

Objective-Several neurologic disorders are treated with deep brain stimulation; however, the mechanism underlying its ability to abolish oscillatory phenomena associated with diseases as diverse as Parkinson's and epilepsy remain largely unknown. In this study we sought to investigate the role of specific neurotransmitters in deep brain stimulation (DBS) and determine the role of non-neuronal cells in its mechanism of action.Methods-We used the ferret thalamic slice preparation in vitro, which exhibits spontaneous spindle oscillations, in order to determine the effect of high-frequency stimulation on neurotransmitter release. We then performed experiments using an in vitro astrocyte culture to investigate the role of glial transmitter release in HFS-mediated abolishment of spindle oscillations.Results-In this series of experiments we demonstrated that glutamate and adenosine release in ferret slices was able to abolish spontaneous spindle oscillations. The glutamate release was still evoked in the presence of the Na + channel blocker tetrodotoxin (TTX), but was eliminated with the vesicular H + -ATPase inhibitor, bafilomycin, and the calcium chelator, BAPTA-AM. Furthermore, electrical stimulation of purified primary astrocytic cultures was able to evoke intracellular calcium transients and glutamate release, and bath application of BAPTA-AM inhibited glutamate release in this setting.Conclusion-These results suggest that vesicular astrocytic neurotransmitter release may be an important mechanism by which DBS is able to achieve clinical benefits.