Abstract

Calcium is a critical second messenger in neurons that contributes to learning and memory, but how the coordination of action potentials of neuronal ensembles with the hippocampal local field potential (LFP) is reflected in dynamic calcium activity remains unclear. Here, we recorded hippocampal calcium activity with endoscopic imaging of the genetically encoded fluorophore GCaMP6 with concomitant LFP in freely behaving mice. Dynamic calcium activity was greater in exploratory behavior and REM sleep than in quiet wakefulness and slow wave sleep, behavioral states that differ with respect to theta and septal cholinergic activity, and modulated at sharp wave ripples (SWRs). Chemogenetic activation of septal cholinergic neurons expressing the excitatory hM3Dq DREADD increased calcium activity and reduced SWRs. Furthermore, inhibition of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChRs) reduced calcium activity while increasing SWRs. These results demonstrate that hippocampal dynamic calcium activity depends on behavioral and theta state as well as endogenous mAChR activation.

Data availability

Imaging data has been deposited into Dryad, and is available at doi:10.5061/dryad.8ct101p

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Heng Zhou

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Kevin R Neville

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Nitsan Goldstein

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Shushi Kabu

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Naila Kausar

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Rong Ye

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Thuan Tinh Nguyen

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Noah Gelwan

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Bradley T Hyman

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Stephen N Gomperts

    Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, United States
    For correspondence
    sgomperts@partners.org
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0083-0077

Funding

National Institute on Aging (1R01 AG054551)

  • Stephen N Gomperts

Fidelity Biosciences

  • Bradley T Hyman
  • Stephen N Gomperts

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 an approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocol (2012N000206) of the Massachusetts General Hospital. All surgery was performed under isoflurane anesthesia, and every effort was made to minimize suffering.

Copyright

© 2019, Zhou 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

  • 5,148
    views
  • 911
    downloads
  • 28
    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)

  1. Heng Zhou
  2. Kevin R Neville
  3. Nitsan Goldstein
  4. Shushi Kabu
  5. Naila Kausar
  6. Rong Ye
  7. Thuan Tinh Nguyen
  8. Noah Gelwan
  9. Bradley T Hyman
  10. Stephen N Gomperts
(2019)
Cholinergic modulation of hippocampal calcium activity across the sleep-wake cycle
eLife 8:e39777.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.39777

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.39777

Further reading

    1. Computational and Systems Biology
    2. Neuroscience
    Pamela Garcia-Saldivar, Cynthia de León ... Hugo Merchant
    Research Article Updated

    We determined the intersubject association between the rhythmic entrainment abilities of human subjects during a synchronization-continuation tapping task (SCT) and the macro- and microstructural properties of their superficial (SWM) and deep (DWM) white matter. Diffusion-weighted images were obtained from 32 subjects who performed the SCT with auditory or visual metronomes and five tempos ranging from 550 to 950 ms. We developed a method to determine the density of short-range fibers that run underneath the cortical mantle, interconnecting nearby cortical regions (U-fibers). Notably, individual differences in the density of U-fibers in the right audiomotor system were correlated with the degree of phase accuracy between the stimuli and taps across subjects. These correlations were specific to the synchronization epoch with auditory metronomes and tempos around 1.5 Hz. In addition, a significant association was found between phase accuracy and the density and bundle diameter of the corpus callosum (CC), forming an interval-selective map where short and long intervals were behaviorally correlated with the anterior and posterior portions of the CC. These findings suggest that the structural properties of the SWM and DWM in the audiomotor system support the tapping synchronization abilities of subjects, as cortical U-fiber density is linked to the preferred tapping tempo and the bundle properties of the CC define an interval-selective topography.

    1. Computational and Systems Biology
    2. Neuroscience
    Matthieu K Chardon, Y Curtis Wang ... Charles J Heckman
    Research Article

    In this study, we develop new reverse engineering (RE) techniques to identify the organization of the synaptic inputs generating firing patterns of populations of neurons. We tested these techniques in silico to allow rigorous evaluation of their effectiveness, using remarkably extensive parameter searches enabled by massively-parallel computation on supercomputers. We chose spinal motoneurons as our target neural system, since motoneurons process all motor commands and have well-established input-output properties. One set of simulated motoneurons was driven by 300,000+ simulated combinations of excitatory, inhibitory, and neuromodulatory inputs. Our goal was to determine if these firing patterns had sufficient information to allow RE identification of the input combinations. Like other neural systems, the motoneuron input-output system is likely non-unique. This non-uniqueness could potentially limit this RE approach, as many input combinations can produce similar outputs. However, our simulations revealed that firing patterns contained sufficient information to sharply restrict the solution space. Thus, our RE approach successfully generated estimates of the actual simulated patterns of excitation, inhibition, and neuromodulation, with variances accounted for ranging from 75–90%. It was striking that nonlinearities induced in firing patterns by the neuromodulation inputs did not impede RE, but instead generated distinctive features in firing patterns that aided RE. These simulations demonstrate the potential of this form of RE analysis. It is likely that the ever-increasing capacity of supercomputers will allow increasingly accurate RE of neuron inputs from their firing patterns from many neural systems.