Effect of Adult Neurogenesis on Sparsely Synchronized Rhythms of The Granule Cells in The Hippocampal Dentate Gyrus

Abstract

We are concerned about the main encoding granule cells (GCs) in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG). Young immature GCs (imGCs) appear through adult neurogenesis. In comparison to the mature GCs (mGCs) (born during development), the imGCs show high activation due to lower firing threshold. On the other hand, they receive low excitatory drive from the entorhinal cortex via perforant paths and from the hilar mossy cells with lower connection probability pc (= 20 x %) (x : synaptic connectivity fraction; 0 ≤ x ≤ 1) than the mGCs with the connection probability pc (= 20 %). Thus, the effect of low excitatory innervation (reducing activation degree) for the imGCs counteracts the effect of their high excitability. We consider a spiking neural network for the DG, incorporating both the mGCs and the imGCs. With decreasing x from 1 to 0, we investigate the effect of young adult-born imGCs on the sparsely synchronized rhythms (SSRs) of the GCs (mGCs, imGC, and whole GCs). For each x, population and individual firing behaviors in the SSRs are characterized in terms of the amplitude measure M (X) a (X = m, im, w for the mGCs, the imGCs, and the whole GCs, respectively) (representing the population synchronization degree) and the random phase-locking degree L (X) d (characterizing the regularity of individual single-cell discharges), respectively. We also note that, for 0 ≤ x ≤ 1, the mGCs and the imGCs exhibit pattern separation (i.e., a process of transforming similar input patterns into less similar output patterns) and pattern integration (making association between patterns), respectively. Quantitative relationship between SSRs and pattern separation and integration is also discussed.