Dendritic inhibition in hippocampal circuits

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Every important event and every significant life episode is encoded in our brain through a concerted dialogue between several distinct cell types that make up the hippocampal formation. This structure comprises glutamatergic principal cells (PCs) and a highly diverse population of GABAergic inhibitory interneurons (INs). In the hippocampal CA1 area - the output region of the hippocampus - morphological, molecular, and functional analyses of INs have identified 21 different cell types (Klausberger and Somogyi, 2008). Intriguingly, the majority of these cells (18 of the 21 types) form synapses on different dendritic domains of PCs and INs, and may therefore gate afferent signals and control dendritic excitability. The proposed research aims to explain why such a diversity of dendritic inhibitory sources is required for information processing within the hippocampal CA1 area by analyzing the cell-type and synapse-specific roles of the dendrite-targeting INs. The results of this research will explain the diversity of inhibitory inputs that converge on hippocampal neuronal dendrites and will shed light on how the local microcircuit wiring may control the computational power of individual neurons in a cell-type and synapse-specific manner.