Theta rhythm generation in lateral habenula and its relation with hippocampal theta

NICOLAS IVAN BERTONE; JOAQUIN PIRIZ; MARIANO BELLUSCIO

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 2nd FALAN Congress; 2016

Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Neuroscience Societies (FALAN)

The hippocampus (HC) is a major limbic structure with a keyrole in memory consolidation and spatial navigation. Thelateral habenula (LHb) is an epithalamic structure that hasbeen reported as a negative and unpleasant value encoder.Behavioral data suggest that LHb provides motivational/emotional value to contexts indicating that informationgenerated in the LHb reaches the Hippocampus.Nevertheless the question of how that information funnelsfrom one structure to the other has not been answered.It has been postulated that the communication betweendifferent brain areas occurs through the synchronizationof populations of neuron, known as rhythms. Thetarhythm (4-12 Hz) in the HC is related with the informationacquisition. In this regard previous works have reported thatthe HC and the LHb oscillate in theta simultaneously (whichcould suggest a communication between HC and LHb,despite there is no direct projections between them), buttheir independence has not been demonstrated, and thepossibility of a shared rhythm generator remains unclear.To address those questions, we performed in vivoelectrophysiological records of local field potential in the HCand LHb during optogenetic stimulation in different areasthat may be candidates for a rhythm generator of theta, inmale Wistar rats under anesthesia.