Section Days abstract book 2010.indd - RUB Research School ...

LS_4
Evaluation of differences in dentate gyrus synaptic
plasticity along the dorsoventral axis
Jana Kenney , 1,2 , Denise Manahan-Vaughan 1,2
1 International Graduate School of Neuroscience, Ruhr University Bochum; 2 Department
of Neurophysiology, Medical Faculty, Ruhr University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, D-
44780 Bochum, Germany;
e-mail: jana.kenney@rub.de
The hippocampus mediates the acquisition of different memory types, presumably through
expression of different forms of synaptic plasticity.Over the last decade evidence has
accumulated to corroborate the hypothesis that the hippocampus is functionally differentiated
along its dorsoventral axis. In contrast to the wealth of data available on synaptic plasticity
mechanisms in the dorsal hippocampus, little is known about synaptic plasticity processes in
the intermediate and ventral hippocampus. This was the subject of the present study.
Rats underwent implantation of a stimulation electrode into the perforant path, and either coimplantation
of recording electrodes in the dorsal and ventral dentate gyrus (DG) or separate
implantations. In the first stage of the project, evoked potentials, long-term depression and
short- and long-term potentiation was examined and compared. In the second stage, the effect
of combining a weak potentiation protocol with a behavioral paradigm (exposition to a novel
environment) was studied.
Our result suggest that afferent input from the entorhinal cortex generates a different profile
of responses in the dorsal vs the ventral DG, which may in turn relate to their possibly distinct
roles in synaptic information processing and memory formation. As the ventral DG has been
recently implicated in the pathophysiology of mood disorders, information contributing to
clarification of its physiological function could be of potential clinical interest.