SINGLE NEURON RECORDINGS IN THE HUMAN MEDIAL TEMPORAL LOBE

BELEN GORI ; HERNÁN REY; CLAUDIA MÚNERA; SANTIAGO COLLAVINI; MÓNICA FERNÁNDEZ LIMA; FERNANDO CHAURE; PABLO SEOANE; EDUARDO SEOANE; SILVIA KOCHEN; RODRIGO QUIAN QUIROGA

Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires

Congreso; XXXII congreso anual SAN 2017; 2017

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

Surgical treatment is indicated for some patients with pharmacologically intractable epilepsy. In these cases, depth electrodes were implanted to localize the epileptic focus to be surgically removed. This offers an exceptional opportunity to record directly the single neuron (SN) activity in the human brain while patients perform different types of cognitive tasks. The aim of this work is to assess the response of SN in the medial temporal lobe to visual stimuli. The electrical activity of multiple SN and local field potentials (LFP) from the hippocampus and amygdala of 5 patients (males, 19-49 y/o) during the presentation of pictures through a laptop monitor (persons, landmarks, objects and animals) was recorded. Then, 3 different pics, text and audio were presented corresponding to the concept whose picture triggers a response in previous session. The recorded activity from depth electrodes were processed using ?spike sorting? algorithms. The activity of dozens SNs were identify, many of which selectively responded to specific concepts. It were recorded 33 SNs (22 hippocampus and 11 amygdala) that responded in an invariant way to 44 concepts (famous characters, landmarks, animals, family and medical members).The implantation of depth electrodes in epileptic patients allows us to observe SN responses to different concepts in brain areas related with memory, which provides unique information on the neural mechanisms involved in the formation and coding of memories.