Thalamic theta phase alignment predicts human memory formation and anterior thalamic cross-frequency coupling
- Otto von Guericke University, Germany
- University of Texas at Dallas, United States
- University of California, Berkeley, United States
Abstract
Previously we reported electrophysiological evidence for a role for the anterior thalamic nucleus (ATN) in human memory formation (Sweeney-Reed et al. 2014). Theta-gamma cross-frequency coupling (CFC) predicted successful memory formation, with the involvement of gamma oscillations suggesting memory-relevant local processing in the ATN. The importance of the theta frequency range in memory processing is well-established, and phase alignment of oscillations is considered to be necessary for synaptic plasticity. We hypothesized that theta phase alignment in the ATN would be necessary for memory encoding. Further analysis of the electrophysiological data reveal that phase alignment in the theta rhythm was greater during successful compared with unsuccessful encoding, and that this alignment was correlated with the CFC. These findings support an active processing role for the ATN during memory formation.
Article and author information
Author details
Ethics
Human subjects: The measurements were approved by the Ethics Commission of the Medical Faculty of the Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg (application number 0308), and all participants gave written informed consent in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 and2008. Consent to participate in our study, as well as for publication of results in an anonymized format,was obtained by the neurosurgeon at the same time as consent was obtained for the surgicalprocedure.
Copyright
© 2015, Sweeney-Reed et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,589
- views
-
- 379
- downloads
-
- 33
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Thalamic theta phase alignment predicts human memory formation and anterior thalamic cross-frequency coupling
eLife 4:e07578.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.07578
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
Data-driven models of neurons and circuits are important for understanding how the properties of membrane conductances, synapses, dendrites, and the anatomical connectivity between neurons generate the complex dynamical behaviors of brain circuits in health and disease. However, the inherent complexity of these biological processes makes the construction and reuse of biologically detailed models challenging. A wide range of tools have been developed to aid their construction and simulation, but differences in design and internal representation act as technical barriers to those who wish to use data-driven models in their research workflows. NeuroML, a model description language for computational neuroscience, was developed to address this fragmentation in modeling tools. Since its inception, NeuroML has evolved into a mature community standard that encompasses a wide range of model types and approaches in computational neuroscience. It has enabled the development of a large ecosystem of interoperable open-source software tools for the creation, visualization, validation, and simulation of data-driven models. Here, we describe how the NeuroML ecosystem can be incorporated into research workflows to simplify the construction, testing, and analysis of standardized models of neural systems, and supports the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) principles, thus promoting open, transparent and reproducible science.
-
- Neuroscience
The central amygdala (CeA) has emerged as an important brain region for regulating both negative (fear and anxiety) and positive (reward) affective behaviors. The CeA has been proposed to encode affective information in the form of valence (whether the stimulus is good or bad) or salience (how significant is the stimulus), but the extent to which these two types of stimulus representation occur in the CeA is not known. Here, we used single cell calcium imaging in mice during appetitive and aversive conditioning and found that majority of CeA neurons (~65%) encode the valence of the unconditioned stimulus (US) with a smaller subset of cells (~15%) encoding the salience of the US. Valence and salience encoding of the conditioned stimulus (CS) was also observed, albeit to a lesser extent. These findings show that the CeA is a site of convergence for encoding oppositely valenced US information.
