2019/12/12 by Brianna Vandrey, Derek L.F. Garden, Veronika Ambrozova +3 · 2 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Memory and Neural Mechanisms #Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior #Memory Processes and Influences
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.11.027
openalex publication_date 2019/12/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Episodic memory requires different types of information to be bound together to generate representations of experiences. The lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) and hippocampus are required for episodic-like memory in rodents [1, 2]. The LEC is critical for integrating spatial and contextual information about objects [2-6]. Further, LEC neurons encode objects in the environment and the locations where objects were previously experienced and generate representations of time during the encoding and retrieval of episodes [7-12]. However, it remains unclear how specific populations of cells within the LEC contribute to the integration of episodic memory components. Layer 2 (L2) of LEC manifests early pathology in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related animal models [13-16]. Projections to the hippocampus from L2 of LEC arise from fan cells in a superficial sub-layer (L2a) that are immunoreactive for reelin and project to the dentate gyrus [17, 18]. Here, we establish an approach for selectively targeting fan cells using Sim1:Cre mice. Whereas complete lesions of the LEC were previously found to abolish associative recognition memory [2, 3], we report that, after selective suppression of synaptic output from fan cells, mice can discriminate novel object-context configurations but are impaired in recognition of novel object-place-context associations. Our results suggest that memory functions are segregated between distinct LEC networks.