Theta rhythm generation in lateral habenula and its relationwith hippocampal theta

NICOLÁS IVÁN BERTONE; MARIANO BELLUSCIO; JOAQUÍN PIRIZ

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 2nd Congress of the Federation of Latin-American and Caribbean Societies for Neuroscience (FALAN); 2016

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }Thehippocampus (HC) is a major limbic structure with a key role inmemory consolidation and spatial navigation. The lateral habenula(LHb) is an epithalamic structure that has been reported as anegative and unpleasant value encoder. Behavioral data suggest thatLHb provides motivational/ emotional value to contexts indicatingthat information generated in the LHb reaches the Hippocampus.Nevertheless the question of how that information funnels from onestructure to the other has not been answered. It has been postulatedthat the communication between different brain areas occurs throughthe synchronization of 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 that the HCand the LHb oscillate in theta simultaneously (which could suggest acommunication between HC and LHb, despite there is no directprojections between them), but their independence has not beendemonstrated, and the possibility of a shared rhythm generatorremains unclear. To address those questions, we performed in vivoelectrophysiological records of local field potential in the HC andLHb during optogenetic stimulation in different areas that may becandidates for a rhythm generator of theta, in male Wistar rats underanesthesia.