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Authors & Affiliations
Aurore Cazala, Thomas Hainmueller, Li-Wen Huang, Marlene Bartos
Abstract
The hippocampus plays a pivotal role in the formation of episodic memories, facilitating spatial navigation and detection of novel stimuli. Within this structure, the dentate gyrus (DG) is crucial for discriminating novel from familiar content. Despite GABAergic inhibitory interneurons (INs) being increasingly recognized to participate to the hippocampal computation by controlling the activity of principal cells, the specific mechanisms by which they contribute to the encoding of episodic memories remain elusive. This study explores how interneurons (INs) representations of spatial context are influenced by experience, internal states, and time. We employed two-photon calcium imaging of two main INs types respectively expressing parvalbumin (PV) and somatostatin (SOM) in mice navigating through familiar and novel virtual environments during several days. Furthermore, we identified distinct roles for two types of DG-SOM interneurons: Hilar-perforant-path-associated interneurons (HIPP cells) and hilar interneurons (HILs), which differ in the location of their axons. Our data indicate unique roles for DG PV- and SOM-INs as well as for the two functionally contrasting DG-SOMI-types that are distinct from their CA1-3 counterparts and may support novelty-dependent, dynamic routing of information through the hippocampus.