Cholinergic suppression of glutamatergic synaptic transmission in hippocampal region CA3 exhibits laminar selectivity: Implication for hippocampal network dynamics

Acetylcholine may help set the dynamics within neural systems to facilitate the learning of new information. Neural models have shown that if new information is encoded at the same time as retrieval of existing information that is already stored, the memories will interfere with each other. Structures such as the hippocampus have a distinct laminar organization of inputs that allows this hypothesis to be tested. In region CA1 of the rat (Sprague Dawley) hippocampus, the cholinergic agonist carbachol (CCh) suppresses transmission in stratum radiatum (SR), at synapses of the Schaffer collateral projection from CA3, while having lesser effects in stratum lacunosum-moleculare (SLM), the perforant path projection from entorhinal cortex (Hasselmo and Schnell, 1994). The current research extends support of this selectivity by demonstrating laminar effects in region CA3. CCh caused significantly greater suppression in SR than in SLM at low concentrations, while the difference in suppression was not significant at higher concentrations. Differences in paired-pulse facilitation suggest presynaptic inhibition substantially contributes to the suppression and is highly concentration and stratum dependent. This selective suppression of the recurrent excitation would be appropriate to set CA3 dynamics to prevent runaway modification of the synapses of excitatory recurrent collaterals by reducing the influence of previously stored associations and allowing incoming information from the perforant path to have a predominant influence on neural activity.