Regional and interhemispheric differences of neuronal representations in dentate gyrus and CA3 inferred from expression of zif268

Abstract

The hippocampal formation is one of the best studied brain regions for spatial and mnemonic representations. These representations have been reported to differ in their properties for individual hippocampal subregions. One approach that allows the detection of neuronal representations is immediate early gene imaging, which relies on the visualization of genomic responses of activated neuronal populations, so called engrams. This method permits the within-animal comparison of neuronal representations across different subregions. In this work, we have used compartmental analysis of temporal activity by fluorescence in-situ hybridisation (catFISH) of the immediate early gene zif268/erg1 to compare neuronal representations between subdivisions of the dentate gyrus and CA3 upon exploration of different contexts. Our findings give an account of subregion-specific ensemble sizes. We confirm previous results regarding disambiguation abilities in dentate gyrus and CA3 but in addition report novel findings: Although ensemble sizes in the lower blade of the dentate gyrus are significantly smaller than in the upper blade both blades are responsive to environmental change. Beyond this, we show significant differences in the representation of familiar and novel environments along the longitudinal axis of dorsal CA3 and most interestingly between CA3 regions of both hemispheres.