Hippocampal Place Fields Emerge upon Single-Cell Manipulation of Excitability During Behavior

• DOI: 10.1126/science.1221489
• Publication Date: 2012-08-16T18:11:54Z
• Authors: Doyun Lee; Bei-Jung Lin; Albert K. Lee
• Keywords: Subthreshold conduction; Place cell

The origin of the spatial receptive fields hippocampal place cells has not been established. A CA1 pyramidal cell receives thousands synaptic inputs, mostly from other spatially tuned neurons; however, how postsynaptic neuron's cellular properties determine response to these inputs during behavior is unknown. We discovered that, contrary expectations basic models and neuronal integration, a small, uniform depolarization untuned somatic membrane potential silent leads sudden reversible emergence subthreshold place-field spiking. Such gating by excitability reveals mechanism for field may be critical formation memory representations.