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The Journal of Neuroscience, July 18, 2007, 27(29):7854-7859; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1704-07.2007

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Brief Communications
Experience-Dependent Increase in CA1 Place Cell Spatial Information, But Not Spatial Reproducibility, Is Dependent on the Autophosphorylation of the -Isoform of the Calcium/Calmodulin-Dependent Protein Kinase II

Francesca Cacucci,¹ Thomas J. Wills,¹ Colin Lever,³ Karl Peter Giese,² and John O'Keefe¹

¹Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, and ²Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom, and ³Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Francesca Cacucci, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. Email: f.cacucci{at}ucl.ac.uk

Place cells in hippocampal area CA1 are essential for spatial learning and memory. Here, we examine whether daily exposure to a previously unexplored environment can alter place cell properties. We demonstrate two previously unreported slowly developing plasticities in mouse place fields: both the spatial tuning and the trial-to-trial reproducibility of CA1 place fields improve over days. We asked whether these two components of improved spatial coding rely on the -isoform of the calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) autophosphorylation, an effector mechanism of NMDA receptor-dependent long-term potentiation and an essential molecular process for spatial memory formation. We show that, in mice with deficient autophosphorylation of CaMKII, the spatial tuning of place fields is initially similar to that of wild-type mice, but completely fails to show the experience-dependent increase over days. In contrast, place field reproducibility in the mutants, although impaired, does show the experience-dependent increase over days. Consequently, the progressive improvement in spatial coding in new hippocampal place cell maps depends on the existence of two molecularly dissociable, experience-dependent processes.

Key words: CaMKII; hippocampus; LTP; place cells; plasticity; spatial memory

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Received Nov. 23, 2006; revised June 13, 2007; accepted June 14, 2007.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Francesca Cacucci, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. Email: f.cacucci{at}ucl.ac.uk

This article has been cited by other articles:

				F. Cacucci, M. Yi, T. J. Wills, P. Chapman, and J. O'Keefe Place cell firing correlates with memory deficits and amyloid plaque burden in Tg2576 Alzheimer mouse model PNAS, June 3, 2008; 105(22): 7863 - 7868. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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