期刊
CEREBRAL CORTEX
卷 29, 期 10, 页码 4067-4076出版社
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhy288
关键词
associative learning; hippocampus; memory storage; plasticity; silent synapse
资金
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31471078, 91132711, 30970960]
- Key Project of Shanghai Science and Technology Commission [15JC1400102]
Clarifying learning-induced synaptic plasticity in hippocampal circuits is critical for understanding hippocampal mechanisms of memory acquisition and storage. Many in vitro studies have demonstrated learning-associated plasticity at hippocampal synapses. However, as a neural basis of memory encoding, the nature of synaptic plasticity underlying hippocampal neuronal responses to memorized stimulation remains elusive. Using in vivo whole-cell recording in anaesthetized adult rats and mice, we investigated synaptic activity of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells (PCs) in response to a flash of visual stimulation as the conditioned stimulus (CS) in associative fear conditioning. We found that shortly (<3 days) after conditioning, excitatory synaptic responses and spiking responses to the flash CS emerged in a large number (similar to 70%) of CA1 PCs, a neuronal population previously unresponsive to the flash before conditioning. The learning-induced CA1 excitatory responsiveness was further indicated to result from postsynaptic unsilencing at flash-associated silent synapses, with NMDA receptor-gated responses we recently reported in naive animals. Our findings suggest that associative fear learning can induce excitatory responsiveness to the memorized CS in a large population of CA1 neurons, via a process of postsynaptic unsilencing at CA1 silent synapses, which may be critical for hippocampal acquisition and storage of associative memory.
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