Serotonin enhances excitability and gamma frequency temporal integration in mouse prefrontal fast-spiking interneurons

  1. Jegath C Athilingam  Is a corresponding author
  2. Roy Ben-Shalom
  3. Caroline M Keeshen
  4. Vikaas Sohal  Is a corresponding author
  5. Kevin Bender  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of California, San Francisco, United States

Abstract

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.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Jegath C Athilingam

    Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    For correspondence
    jiggy.athilingam@ucsf.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Roy Ben-Shalom

    Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Caroline M Keeshen

    Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Vikaas Sohal

    Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    For correspondence
    vikaas.sohal@ucsf.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2238-4186
  5. Kevin Bender

    Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, United States
    For correspondence
    kevin.bender@ucsf.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-7084-1532

Funding

National Institute of Mental Health (NRSA F31 MH111219-01)

  • Jegath C Athilingam

National Institutes of Health (U01 MH105948)

  • Vikaas Sohal

National Institutes of Health (R01 DA035913)

  • Kevin Bender

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

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (AN170116, AN129822-02F) of the University of California, San Francisco. All surgery was performed under isofluorane anesthesia, and every effort was made to minimize suffering.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Marlene Bartos, University of Freiburg, Germany

Version history

  1. Received: September 14, 2017
  2. Accepted: December 2, 2017
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: December 5, 2017 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: December 28, 2017 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2017, Athilingam 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. Jegath C Athilingam
  2. Roy Ben-Shalom
  3. Caroline M Keeshen
  4. Vikaas Sohal
  5. Kevin Bender
(2017)
Serotonin enhances excitability and gamma frequency temporal integration in mouse prefrontal fast-spiking interneurons
eLife 6:e31991.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31991

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