Promoting Pleasant Memories with a Specialized Serotonergic Projection to the Hippocampus

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Andrea Giorgi, Emory University; Giacomo Maddaloni, Harvard Medical School
• Language: English
• Date: 2021-01-13
• Publisher: Society for Neuroscience
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2021 the authors
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1615-20.2020
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 2
• Start Page: 212
• End Page: 214
• Keywords: Hippocampus
• Research Categories: Biology, Physiology; Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery

Abstract

Navigating the environment in pursuit of provisions exposes animals to several risks, including predation, yet it is essential for survival. Minimizing the time spent in danger by learning and recalling the location of reliable sources of food is therefore valuable. This ability is not as simple as it might sound: it requires that animals assess various food sources, associate the magnitude of rewards with the unique sensory cues defining each food location, and consolidate spatial memories of the most reliable locations for future recall. CA1 pyramidal neurons of the hippocampus play fundamental roles in spatial memory formation, encoding an animal's position through a map-like representation of the external environment (O'Keefe, 1976). In addition, hippocampal coding helps animals identify and memorize reward locations across changing environments to drive goal-oriented navigation (Gauthier and Tank, 2018; LeGates et al., 2018; Trouche et al., 2019). This complex function likely involves the integration of reward signals into the hippocampal circuit, with the ultimate goal of enhancing retention and stabilization of reward-salient memories.