O Speaker: Prof. Inah Lee

O Affiliation: Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences College of Natural Sciences Seoul National University 

O Date: Nov. 06, 2024

O Start Time: 4:00 PM

O Title: Are Places and Their Values Reactivated in Separate Areas of the Hippocampus? 

O Abstract:

Reactivating place cells during sharp-wave ripples in the hippocampus is believed to underlie memory consolidation. However, whether hippocampal reactivation is affected by the values of events experienced by the animal is largely unknown. Our laboratory investigated whether place cells in the dorsal (dHP) and intermediate (iHP) hippocampus of rats are differentially reactivated depending on the value associated with a place during the learning of places associated with higher-value rewards in a T-maze. Place cells in the iHP representing the high-value location were reactivated significantly more frequently than those representing the low-value location, characteristics not observed in the dHP. In contrast, the activities of place cells in the dHP coding the routes leading to high-value locations were replayed more than those in the iHP. Our findings suggest that value-based differential reactivation patterns along the septotemporal axis of the hippocampus play essential roles in optimizing goal-directed spatial learning for maximal reward. Furthermore, our recent findings on dissociative roles of the dorsal and intermediate regions of the hippocampus urge hippocampal researchers to rethink their ways of hypothesizing the hippocampal operations and embrace the functional heterogeneity across different subregions and septotemporal divisions of the hippocampus.

* The seminar will be held offline and online[https://kaist.zoom.us/j/88058197857] simultaneously.

* Closed Caption interpretation service (English) available online (service provided by Zoom)