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Contributions of I h to feature selectivity in layer II stellate cells of the entorhinal cortex

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Abstract

Stellate cells (SCs) of the entorhinal cortex generate prominent subthreshold oscillations that are believed to be important contributors to the hippocampal theta rhythm. The slow inward rectifier I h is expressed prominently in SCs and has been suggested to be a dominant factor in their integrative properties. We studied the input-output relationships in stellate cells (SCs) of the entorhinal cortex, both in control conditions and in the presence of the I h antagonist ZD7288. Our results show that I h is responsible for SCs’ subthreshold resonance, and contributes to enhanced spiking reliability to theta-rich stimuli. However, SCs still exhibit other traits of rhythmicity, such as subthreshold oscillations, under I h blockade. To clarify the effects of I h on SC spiking, we used a generalized form of principal component analysis to show that SCs select particular features with relevant temporal signatures from stimuli. The spike-selected mix of those features varies with the frequency content of the stimulus, emphasizing the inherent nonlinearity of SC responses. A number of controls confirmed that this selectivity represents a stimulus-induced change in the cellular input-output relationship rather than an artifact of the analysis technique. Sensitivity to slow features remained statistically significant in ZD7288. However, with I h blocked, slow stimulus features were less predictive of spikes and spikes conveyed less information about the stimulus over long time scales. Together, these results suggest that I h is an important contributor to the input-output relationships expressed by SCs, but that other factors in SCs also contribute to subthreshold oscillations and nonlinear selectivity to slow features.

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Acknowledgments

We owe thanks to the faculty and organizers of the Methods in Computational Neuroscience course at the Marine Biological Lab (Woods Hole, MA, USA), where this project was started. We are particularly grateful to William Bialek, former co-Director of MCN, who provided substantial guidance in use of GPCA and information theoretic methods. We thank Kamal Sen and Jon Shlens for helpful discussions, and Kyle Lillis for reading a preliminary version of the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (R01 MH61604, R01 NS34425) to J.A. White.

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Author notes

  1. Julie S. Haas

    Present address: Institute for Nonlinear Science, MC0402, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093-0402, USA

  2. Alan D. Dorval II

    Present address: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, 136 Hudson Hall, Box 90281, Durham, NC, 27708-0281, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Center for BioDynamics, Center for Memory and Brain, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Julie S. Haas, Alan D. Dorval II & John A. White

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  1. Julie S. Haas
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  2. Alan D. Dorval II
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  3. John A. White
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Correspondence to John A. White.

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Action Editor: Xiao-Jing Wang

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Haas, J.S., Dorval II, A.D. & White, J.A. Contributions of I h to feature selectivity in layer II stellate cells of the entorhinal cortex. J Comput Neurosci 22, 161–171 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-006-0005-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-006-0005-7

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