Ventral CA1 neurons store social memory

By T. Okuyama, T. Kitamura, Dheeraj S. Roy, S. Itohara, S. Tonegawa. 2016

595 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus, has been implicated in social memory. However, it remains unknown which parts of these brain regions and their circuits hold social memory. Here, we show that ventral hippocampal CA1 (vCA1) neurons of a mouse and their projections to nucleus accumbens (NAc) shell play a necessary and sufficient role in social memory. Both the proportion of activated vCA1 cells and the strength and stability of the responding cells are greater in response to a familiar mouse than to a previously unencountered mouse. Optogenetic reactivation of vCA1 neurons that respond to the familiar mouse enabled memory retrieval and the association of these neurons with unconditioned stimuli. Thus, vCA1 neurons and their NAc shell projections are a component of the storage site of social memory.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

The role of adult hippocampal neurogenesis in brain health and disease (2018, background): “vation of ventral DG neurons by optogenetic approaches can reduce anxiety levels [150, 151], possibly by regulating The role of adult hippocampal neurogenesis in brain health and disease”
Memory engrams: Recalling the past and imagining the future (2020, background): “The dorsal CA2 to ventral CA1 (vCA1) hippocampal circuit plays a pivotal role in social discrimination (133), with a vCA1 engram representing the familiar mouse (134).”
The hippocampus and related neocortical structures in memory transformation. (2018, result): “Similar ﬁ ndings were reported for non-aversive social memory such as recognition of a con-speci ﬁ c [82], suggesting that this phenomenon is not limited to fear memory.”