Altered synaptic plasticity of the longitudinal dentate gyrus network in noise-induced anxiety

Sojeong Pak; Gona Choi; Jaydeep Roy; Chi Him Poon; Jinho Lee; Dajin Cho; Minseok Lee; Lee Wei Lim; Shaowen Bao; Sunggu Yang; Sungchil Yang

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.104364

Altered synaptic plasticity of the longitudinal dentate gyrus network in noise-induced anxiety

iScience. 2022 May 6;25(6):104364. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104364. eCollection 2022 Jun 17.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neuroscience, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
² School of Biomedical Sciences, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
³ Department of Nano-Bioengineering, Incheon National University, Incheon 22012, South Korea.
⁴ Department of Physiology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA.

Abstract

Anxiety is characteristic comorbidity of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), which causes physiological changes within the dentate gyrus (DG), a subfield of the hippocampus that modulates anxiety. However, which DG circuit underlies hearing loss-induced anxiety remains unknown. We utilize an NIHL mouse model to investigate short- and long-term synaptic plasticity in DG networks. The recently discovered longitudinal DG-DG network is a collateral of DG neurons synaptically connected with neighboring DG neurons and displays robust synaptic efficacy and plasticity. Furthermore, animals with NIHL demonstrate increased anxiety-like behaviors similar to a response to chronic restraint stress. These behaviors are concurrent with enhanced synaptic responsiveness and suppressed short- and long-term synaptic plasticity in the longitudinal DG-DG network but not in the transverse DG-CA3 connection. These findings suggest that DG-related anxiety is typified by synaptic alteration in the longitudinal DG-DG network.

Keywords: Behavioral neuroscience; Biological sciences; Neuroscience.