TY - JOUR TI - Serotonin enhances excitability and gamma frequency temporal integration in mouse prefrontal fast-spiking interneurons AU - Athilingam, Jegath C AU - Ben-Shalom, Roy AU - Keeshen, Caroline M AU - Sohal, Vikaas S AU - Bender, Kevin J A2 - Bartos, Marlene VL - 6 PY - 2017 DA - 2017/12/05 SP - e31991 C1 - eLife 2017;6:e31991 DO - 10.7554/eLife.31991 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31991 AB - The medial prefrontal cortex plays a key role in higher order cognitive functions like decision making and social cognition. These complex behaviors emerge from the coordinated firing of prefrontal neurons. Fast-spiking interneurons (FSIs) control the timing of excitatory neuron firing via somatic inhibition and generate gamma (30–100 Hz) oscillations. Therefore, factors that regulate how FSIs respond to gamma-frequency input could affect both prefrontal circuit activity and behavior. Here, we show that serotonin (5HT), which is known to regulate gamma power, acts via 5HT2A receptors to suppress an inward-rectifying potassium conductance in FSIs. This leads to depolarization, increased input resistance, enhanced spiking, and slowed decay of excitatory post-synaptic potentials (EPSPs). Notably, we found that slowed EPSP decay preferentially enhanced temporal summation and firing elicited by gamma frequency inputs. These findings show how changes in passive membrane properties can affect not only neuronal excitability but also the temporal filtering of synaptic inputs. KW - serotonin KW - prefrontal cortex KW - fast-spiking interneurons KW - synaptic integration KW - temporal summation KW - parvalbumin interneurons JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -