Activation of Entorhinal Cortical Projections to the Dentate Gyrus Underlies Social Memory Retrieval

Publication date: 22 May 2018
Source:Cell Reports, Volume 23, Issue 8
Author(s): Celeste Leung, Feng Cao, Robin Nguyen, Krutika Joshi, Afif J. Aqrabawi, Shuting Xia, Miguel A. Cortez, O. Carter Snead, Jun Chul Kim, Zhengping Jia
Social interactions are essential to our mental health, and a deficit in social interactions is a hallmark characteristic of numerous brain disorders. Various subregions within the medial temporal lobe have been implicated in social memory, but the underlying mechanisms that tune these neural circuits remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that optical activation of excitatory entorhinal cortical perforant projections to the dentate gyrus (EC-DG) is necessary and sufficient for social memory retrieval. We further show that inducible disruption of p21-activated kinase (PAK) signaling, a key pathway important for cytoskeletal reorganization, in the EC-DG circuit leads to impairments in synaptic function and social recognition memory, and, importantly, optogenetic activation of the EC-DG terminals reverses the social memory deficits in the transgenic mice. These results provide compelling evidence that activation of the EC-DG pathway underlies social recognition memory recall and that PAK signaling may play a critical role in modulating this process.

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Leung et al. reveal the role of the entorhinal cortical pathway to the dentate gyrus and PAK (p21-activated kinase) in social recognition memory. The study provides insight into the understanding of social memory and suggests that manipulations of this pathway may be beneficial in improving social memory in brain disorders.


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