title: Spatial tuning and brain state account for dorsal hippocampal CA1 activity in a non-spatial learning task.
abstract: The hippocampus is a brain area crucial for episodic memory in humans. In contrast, studies in rodents have highlighted its role in spatial learning, supported by the discovery of place cells. Efforts to reconcile these views have found neurons in the rodent hippocampus that respond to non-spatial events but have not unequivocally dissociated the spatial and non-spatial influences on these cells. To disentangle these influences, we trained freely moving rats in trace eyeblink conditioning, a hippocampally dependent task in which the animal learns to blink in response to a tone. We show that dorsal CA1 pyramidal neurons are all place cells, and do not respond to the tone when the animal is moving. When the animal is inactive, the apparent tone-evoked responses reflect an arousal-mediated resumption of place-specific firing. These results suggest that one of the main output stages of the hippocampus transmits only spatial information, even in this non-spatial task.
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States.
authors.forename: Kevin Q
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-2621-1274
authors.initials: KQ
authors.lastname: Shan
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States.
authors.forename: Evgueniy V
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1099-944X
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Lubenov
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Papadopoulou
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States.
authors.forename: Athanassios G
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8837-678X
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Siapas
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001767:Blinking; D056547:CA1 Region, Hippocampal / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning; D008124:Locomotion; D017966:Pyramidal Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats
keywords: dorsal CA1; hippocampus; neuroscience; nonspatial learning; rat