Citation

During my PhD I studied the neuronal network responsible for cortical activation during paradoxical sleep (PS) in rodents. In the first part of my thesis, I participated to the demonstration that this activation is limited to a few limbic structures involved in learning, including the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus (DG). Then, we showed that the activation of DG during PS is due to a projection from the supramammillary nucleus (Sum). Besides, by combining the in situ hybridization of markers of GABAergic and glutamatergic neurons and FOS immunohistochemistry, I demonstrated that lateral Sum neurons active in SP are both glutamatergic and GABAergic (GLU/GABA). Finally, I showed that the increasing number of FOS+ neurons in the dorsal DG during PS is abolished by the neurochemical lesion of the Sum. In addition, the Sum lesion induces a clear reduction of the density of glutamatergic fibers in the dorsal DG. These results indicate that during PS, dorsal DG neurons are activated by GLU/GABA neurons located in the lateral Sum. The second aim of my thesis was to determine the function of this pathway during PS. To realize that, I inactivated or activated by optogenetics the Sum GLU/GABA fibers located in the dorsal GD during SP. Our results show that the activation of these fibers during SP induces an increase in the theta frequency and power recorded in the dorsal DG. These results indicate that the Sum-dorsal DG-pathway modulates the hippocampal theta and supports the hypothesis of a role of this pathway in the memory consolidation process during SP