Maturation and functional integration of new granule cells into the adult hippocampus

JOSEPH BISCHOFBERGER; ALEJANDRO F. SCHINDER

Adult Neurogenesis

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

Lugar: Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA; Año: 2007; p. 299 - 320

The hippocampus, located within the medial temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex, is critically important for the formation of semantic and episodic memory (Squire 2004). As other cortical circuits, the hippocampal network (Figure 1) is highly dynamic and has the capacity to modify its connectivity by changing number and strength of synaptic contacts in an activity-dependent manner. Synaptic connections can be added, strengthened, weakened, or eliminated in response to neuronal activity, a phenomenon called synaptic plasticity. The plasticity of specific hippocampal synapses plays a significant role in memory formation and learning of hippocampus-dependent tasks (Nakazawa et al. 2004; Whitlock et al. 2006). The dentate gyrus (DG) of the adult hippocampus has the additional capacity of modifying the circuitry by the addition of new neurons. Thus, network remodeling is not limited to synapses but also include the incorporation of new functional units (neurons) that provide an additional dimension of plasticity to the existing hippocampal circuitry (Schinder and Gage 2004; Song et al. 2005; Piatti et al. 2006; Lledo et al. 2006).