Sparse activity of identified dentate granule cells during spatial exploration

  1. Maria Diamantaki
  2. Markus Frey
  3. Philipp Berens
  4. Patricia Preston-Ferrer  Is a corresponding author
  5. Andrea Burgalossi  Is a corresponding author
  1. Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Germany

Abstract

In the dentate gyrus - a key component of spatial memory circuits - granule cells (GCs) are known to be morphologically diverse and to display heterogeneous activity profiles during behavior. To resolve structure-function relationships, we juxtacellularly recorded and labeled single GCs in freely-moving rats. We found that the vast majority of neurons were silent during exploration. Most active GCs displayed a characteristic spike waveform, fired at low rates and showed spatial activity. Primary dendritic parameters were sufficient for classifying neurons as active or silent with high accuracy. Our data thus support a sparse coding scheme in the dentate gyrus and provide a possible link between structural and functional heterogeneity among the GC population.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Maria Diamantaki

    Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Markus Frey

    Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Philipp Berens

    Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0199-4727
  4. Patricia Preston-Ferrer

    Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
    For correspondence
    patricia.preston@cin.uni-tuebingen.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Andrea Burgalossi

    Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
    For correspondence
    andrea.burgalossi@cin.uni-tuebingen.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0039-3599

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (EXC 307)

  • Maria Diamantaki
  • Markus Frey
  • Philipp Berens
  • Patricia Preston-Ferrer
  • Andrea Burgalossi

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (FKZ 01GQ1601)

  • Philipp Berens

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Karel Svoboda, Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, United States

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All experimental procedures were performed according to the German guidelines on animal welfare and approved by the local institution in charge of experiments using animals (Regierungspraesidium Tuebingen, permit numbers CIN2/14, CIN/5/14 and CIN/814).

Version history

  1. Received: August 3, 2016
  2. Accepted: October 1, 2016
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: October 3, 2016 (version 1)
  4. Accepted Manuscript updated: October 5, 2016 (version 2)
  5. Version of Record published: October 24, 2016 (version 3)
  6. Version of Record updated: November 3, 2016 (version 4)

Copyright

© 2016, Diamantaki 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.

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  1. Maria Diamantaki
  2. Markus Frey
  3. Philipp Berens
  4. Patricia Preston-Ferrer
  5. Andrea Burgalossi
(2016)
Sparse activity of identified dentate granule cells during spatial exploration
eLife 5:e20252.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20252

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20252

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