TY - JOUR TI - Age-dependent modulation of short-term neuronal dynamics in the dorsal and ventral rat hippocampus AU - Trompoukis, George AU - Tsotsokou, Giota AU - Koutsoumpa, Andriana AU - Tsolaki, Maria AU - Vryoni, Georgia AU - Papatheodoropoulos, Costas T2 - The International Journal of Developmental Biology AB - Brain aging is associated with alterations in the behavioral capacity to process information, due to mechanisms that are still largely unclear. Short-term neuronal activity dynamics are basic properties of local brain networks profoundly involved in neural information processing. In this study, we investigated the properties of short-term changes in excitatory synaptic transmission and neuronal excitation in the CA1 field of dorsal and ventral hippocampal slices from young adult and old rats. We found that short-term synaptic plasticity (i.e. short-term dynamics of input to CA1 circuit) does not significantly differ between young and old dorsal or ventral hippocampus. However, short-term dynamics of hippocampal output differ markedly between young and old rats. Notably, age-dependent alterations in short-term neuronal dynamics were detected mainly in the dorsal hippocampus. Thus, the dorsal hippocampus of young rats can detect and facilitate transmission of 1-30 Hz input and depress transmission of higher-frequency input. In contrast, the old dorsal hippocampus appears unable to transmit information in a frequency-dependent discriminatory manner. Furthermore, the amplification of steady-state output at frequencies < 40 Hz is considerably lower in the old than the young dorsal hippocampus. The old ventral hippocampus did not show major alterations in short-term processing of neural information, though under conditions of intense afferent activation, neuronal output of the ventral hippocampus is depressed at steady-state more in old than in young rats. These results suggest that aging is accompanied by alterations in neural information processing mainly in the dorsal hippocampus, which displays a narrower dynamic range of frequency-dependent transient changes in neuronal activity in old compared with young adult rats. These alterations in short-term dynamics may relate to deficits in processing ongoing activity seen in old individuals. PY - 2022 DO - 10.1387/ijdb.210191cp VL - 66 IS - 1-2-3 SP - 285 EP - 296 J2 - Int. J. Dev. Biol. LA - en SN - 0214-6282 SN - 1696-3547 UR - https://ijdb.ehu.eus/article/210191cp Y2 - 2024/04/26/14:56:51 ER -