RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Expression of c-Fos and Arc in hippocampal region CA1 marks neurons that exhibit learning-related activity changes
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 644526
DO 10.1101/644526
A1 Mahringer, David
A1 Petersen, Anders V.
A1 Fiser, Aris
A1 Okuno, Hiroyuki
A1 Bito, Haruhiko
A1 Perrier, Jean-François
A1 Keller, Georg B.
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/05/23/644526.abstract
AB Immediate early genes (IEGs) are transcribed in response to neural activity and necessary for many forms of plasticity. However, the dynamics of their expression during learning, as well as their relationship to neural activity, remain unclear. Here we used two-photon imaging in transgenic mice that express a GFP-tagged variant of Arc or c-Fos and a red-shifted calcium indicator to measure learning-related changes in IEG expression levels and neural activity in hippocampal region CA1 as mice learned to perform a two-alternative forced choice task. Neural activity levels correlated positively with IEG expression levels in vivo. In addition, we found that with learning, a subset of neurons in CA1 increased their responses to the reward-predicting cue, and IEG expression levels early in learning were selectively increased in neurons that would exhibit the strongest learning-related changes. Our findings are consistent with an interpretation of IEG expression levels as markers for experience dependent plasticity.