The hippocampal CA2 region is essential for social memory
By Frederick L. Hitti, S. Siegelbaum. Nature, 2014
904 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The hippocampus is critical for encoding declarative memory, our repository of knowledge of who, what, where and when. 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 to CA3 and then to CA1, the main hippocampal output. Genetic lesions of EC (ref. 3) and hippocampal dentate gyrus (ref. 4), CA3 (ref. 5) and CA1 (ref. 6) 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 output. Here we report a novel transgenic mouse line that enabled us to selectively examine the synaptic connections and behavioural 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 hippocampus-dependent behaviours, including spatial and contextual memory. These behavioural and anatomical results thus reveal CA2 as a critical hub of sociocognitive memory processing.
Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a6576814ff321874b6fa9395eee21393bda3dfe6
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
- James J. Knierim
- Joshua P. Neunuebel
- Sheena A. Josselyn
- S. Tonegawa
- David J. Foster
- E. T. Rolls
- György Buzsáki
- Y. Dudai
In Cognitive Neuroscience
- James J. Knierim
- Joshua P. Neunuebel
- Sheena A. Josselyn
- S. Tonegawa
- David J. Foster
- E. T. Rolls
- György Buzsáki
- Paul W. Frankland
In Social Psychology
Citations in the corpus
- Tracking the Flow of Hippocampal Computation: Pattern Separation, Pattern Completion, and Attractor Dynamics (2015, background): “We also need to know how the CA2 region, which has been mostly ignored in the literature until recently, fits into the picture (Chevaleyre & Siegelbaum, 2010; Jones & McHugh, 2011; Caruana, Alexander, & Dudek, 2012; Hitti & Siegelbaum, 2014; Mankin, Diehl, Sparks, Leutgeb, & Leutgeb, 2015).”
- 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 (177), with a vCA1 engram representing the familiar mouse (178).”