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Hippocampal theta oscillations are travelling waves

Author

Listed:
  • Evgueniy V. Lubenov

    (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA)

  • Athanassios G. Siapas

    (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA)

Abstract

Theta oscillations clock hippocampal activity during awake behaviour and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. These oscillations are prominent in the local field potential, and they also reflect the subthreshold membrane potential and strongly modulate the spiking of hippocampal neurons. The prevailing view is that theta oscillations are synchronized throughout the hippocampus, despite the lack of conclusive experimental evidence. In contrast, here we show that in freely behaving rats, theta oscillations in area CA1 are travelling waves that propagate roughly along the septotemporal axis of the hippocampus. Furthermore, we find that spiking in the CA1 pyramidal cell layer is modulated in a consistent travelling wave pattern. Our results demonstrate that theta oscillations pattern hippocampal activity not only in time, but also across anatomical space. The presence of travelling waves indicates that the instantaneous output of the hippocampus is topographically organized and represents a segment, rather than a point, of physical space.

Suggested Citation

  • Evgueniy V. Lubenov & Athanassios G. Siapas, 2009. "Hippocampal theta oscillations are travelling waves," Nature, Nature, vol. 459(7246), pages 534-539, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:459:y:2009:i:7246:d:10.1038_nature08010
    DOI: 10.1038/nature08010
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    Cited by:

    1. Laura R González-Ramírez & Omar J Ahmed & Sydney S Cash & C Eugene Wayne & Mark A Kramer, 2015. "A Biologically Constrained, Mathematical Model of Cortical Wave Propagation Preceding Seizure Termination," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(2), pages 1-34, February.
    2. Erfan Zabeh & Nicholas C. Foley & Joshua Jacobs & Jacqueline P. Gottlieb, 2023. "Beta traveling waves in monkey frontal and parietal areas encode recent reward history," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-12, December.
    3. Luca Ambrogioni & Marcel A J van Gerven & Eric Maris, 2017. "Dynamic decomposition of spatiotemporal neural signals," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-37, May.

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