The formation and evolution of a neural code for rewarding memories
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Memories of rewarding episodes can be vivid and contain detail that lasts a lifetime. The mammalian hippocampus is essential for the formation of episodic memory, but how it supports the privileged encoding and long-term retention of memories for rewarding events is poorly understood. Hippocampal CA1 pyramidal cells exhibit place fields at a higher prevalence around reward locations, however, it has been unknown how CA1 representations of rewarding experiences form and evolve over the timescales of long-term memory formation. We used a head-mounted miniature fluorescence microscope to track the calcium dynamics of > 10,000 CA1 pyramidal cells expressing the calcium indicator GCaMP6m as freely behaving mice learned to perform a reward-motivated spatial task over 9 consecutive days. The CA1 ensemble showed progressive refinement as the mice learned the association between place and reward. We observed the formation of a place field over-representation of the rewarded location, the magnitude of which increased with learning. Selective recruitment, remapping and stabilization of cells at the reward location supported the formation and maintenance of this over-representation. Ensemble decoding of the mouse's position from the population of imaged neural activity suggested that both the preponderance of place fields and narrower field widths contributed to better representational accuracy of the reward location. These results suggest that long-term refinements to the over-representation of rewarded locations may support reward-associated spatial memory.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Otto Hamel, Elizabeth Jane |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Applied Physics. |
| Primary advisor | Schnitzer, Mark Jacob, 1970- |
| Thesis advisor | Schnitzer, Mark Jacob, 1970- |
| Thesis advisor | Ganguli, Surya, 1977- |
| Thesis advisor | Wagner, Anthony David |
| Advisor | Ganguli, Surya, 1977- |
| Advisor | Wagner, Anthony David |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Elizabeth Jane Otto Hamel. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Applied Physics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Elizabeth Jane Otto Hamel
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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