Special Seminar with Laura Colgin, PhD, University of Texas at Austin

Title:  Slow and fast gamma rhythms in the hippocampal network

Abstract:  Brain rhythms reflect periodically synchronized electrical activity across groups of neurons and are thought to facilitate neuronal communication across brain regions.  Gamma is a particular rhythm type that occurs throughout many regions of the brain and has been linked to functions such as attention and memory.  The hippocampus, a key brain region for memory, is believed to exhibit two distinct subtypes of gamma rhythms, termed slow and fast gamma.  In this talk, evidence will be presented that supports the hypothesis that slow and fast gamma rhythms serve different functions in the hippocampal network.  Our results show that the principal neurons of the hippocampus, “place cells”, code spatial information differently during slow and fast gamma.  Also, new unpublished results suggest that slow and fast gamma rhythms promote different memory operations and that separation of slow and fast gamma may prevent interference between memory encoding and retrieval. Future directions, and potential implications of these findings for memory disorders, will also be discussed.