Project B1 (Manahan-Vaughan)
How do sensory systems interact with the hippocampus in the formation of synaptic plasticity and spatial memory?
Summary
To enable the generation of a cognitive engram, the hippocampus must process multiple sensory modalities that are transferred to this structure by means of the entorhinal cortex. In the second funding period we scrutinised how olfactory information is processed by the piriform cortex (PC) and delivered to the hippocampus for subsequent encoding. Our finding that the piriform cortex resists expressing synaptic plasticity has motivated us to scrutinise the precise circuitry of the piriform cortex in the current funding period. To what extent the piriform cortex can directly initiate hippocampal plasticity is also being explored. We do this by integrating in vivo electrophysiological recordings from the hippocampus and the piriform cortex of learning rodents with optogenetics, functional in situ hybridisation and functional MRI.
Principal Investigator
Projects B1, B3, B10, Z1, Z2
Prof. Dr. Denise Manahan-Vaughan
Neurophysiology
Medical Faculty
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
MA 4 / 150
Universitätsstr. 150
44801 Bochum
Phone: +49 - (0)234 - 32 - 22042
Fax: +49 - (0)234 - 32 - 14490