Topic: CA2

Although essential for protein structure, stability and function, polyamination is still poorly explored posttranslational modification. In the brain, polyamines (putrescine, spermidine and spermine), are involved in a variety of neuronal processes, including neuronal development, neurotransmission, neuroprotection and synaptic plasticity, but it remains to be identified what is the role of polyamination in these mechanisms.Hippocampal pyramidal neurons exhibit specific properties, depending on the subregion. Those found in the subregion CA1 possess plastic synapses and are very sensitive to e

Mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU) is a protein that facilitates calcium ion influx into mitochondria. It is well established that MCU, through mitochondrial Ca2+ overload, may promote neuronal death in different neuropathological conditions, especially those involving excitotoxicity. Surprisingly, MCU distribution in hippocampus is inversely proportional to susceptibility of individual hippocampal subregions to death – the highest MCU expression is found in CA2, the lowest - in CA1 (the most and the least resistant regions, respectively). The aim of my study was therefore to assess cell ty

The entorhinal cortex is an area known to be involved in spatial navigation and episodic memories. While the spatial aspects of episodic memories have been studied in great detail, questions still remain regarding the processing of social information in the brain.Emerging evidence points towards a complex network of brain areas involved in social memory processing. In particular, the hippocampal regions CA2 and ventral CA1 play an important role, but the role of computations within the hippocampus compared to the input regions remains unresolved. With entorhinal cortex being the main input reg

The hippocampus plays an integral role in episodic memory, primarily through neurons in the CA1 subfield. Beyond the well-established canonical circuitry, the CA2 region is implicated in social memory. Notably, there are monosynaptic connections from CA2 that innervate CA1, the functional relevance of which remains relatively unknown. Our study aims to investigate how these CA2-CA1 connections can modulate the maintenance of functional plasticity models, such as long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD), within the Schaffer collateral (SC)-CA1 synapses. Subthreshold stimulati

Across animal species, novel stimuli elicit arousal and evoke sensory inspection and exploration. This type of spontaneous curiosity critically relies on the animals’ ability to identify the novelty of a sensory stimulus against previously experienced stimuli. However, since familiarity is characterized by the absence of a behavioural responses, passive novelty detection tasks involve asymmetric motor responses which can confound the analysis of neural signals. To address this limitation, I established a two alternative forced choice novelty detection task which offers the opportunity to inves

Neuronal plasticity is a fundamental property of the nervous system that allows a change in the response to stimulation by reorganizing its structure, functions and connections. Among the main regulators of neuronal plasticity are perineuronal nets (PNNs), condensed forms of extracellular matrix (ECM) that enwrap mainly parvalbumin expressing (PV+) inhibitory interneurons. Glycoprotein tenascin-C (TnC) is one of the ECM molecules that interacts with components of PNNs and that modulates the synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. The aim of this study was to investigate whether TnC deficiency

Hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons receive excitatory inputs from both ipsi- and contralateral CA3 and CA2 regions. While synaptic plasticity at the intrahippocampal Schaffer collateral synapses has been extensively described, synaptic plasticity mechanisms at interhippocampal commissural fiber synapses are less well understood. In this project, we investigate cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP)-dependent plasticity at commissural synapses in the CA1 region. We performed in vivo stereotactic injections of AAVs to express ChrimsonR unilaterally in CA3/CA2 glutamatergic neurons of one hippocamp