Projection-specific integration of convergent thalamic and retrosplenial signals in the presubicular head direction cortex

  1. Louis Richevaux
  2. Dongkyun Lim
  3. Mérie Nassar
  4. Léa Dias Rodrigues
  5. Constanze Mauthe
  6. Ivan Cohen
  7. Nathalie Sol-Foulon
  8. Desdemona Fricker

  • Curated by eLife

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    eLife assessment

    Richevaux and colleagues conducted a valuable study that investigated the integration of thalamic and retrosplenial inputs in the dorsal presubiculum, an essential hippocampal region involved in spatial navigation and memory. Through ex vivo optogenetic electrophysiological experiments, they discovered that many presubicular pyramidal cells receive convergent inputs from both the anterior thalamus and the retrosplenial cortex. These solid findings provide a potential cellular mechanism for anchoring the brain's internal compass to external landmarks, shedding light on how the brain integrates spatial information with an animal's sense of its position in space.

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Abstract

Head-direction (HD) signals function as the brain’s internal compass. They are organized as an attractor, and anchor to the environment via visual landmarks. Here we examine how thalamic HD signals and visual landmark information from the retrosplenial cortex combine in the presubiculum. We find that monosynaptic excitatory connections from anterior thalamic nucleus and from retrosplenial cortex converge on single layer 3 pyramidal neurons in the dorsal portion of mouse presubiculum. Independent dual wavelength photostimulation of these inputs in slices leads to action potential generation preferentially for near-coincident inputs, indicating that layer 3 neurons can transmit a visually matched HD signal to medial entorhinal cortex. Layer 4 neurons, which innervate the lateral mammillary nucleus, form a second step in the association of HD and landmark signals. They receive little direct input from thalamic and retrosplenial axons. We show that layer 4 cells are excited di-synaptically, transforming regular spiking activity into bursts of action potentials, and that their firing is enhanced by cholinergic agonists. Thus, a coherent sense of orientation involves projection specific translaminar processing in the presubiculum, where neuromodulation facilitates landmark updating of HD signals in the lateral mammillary nucleus.

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  1. Version published to 10.7554/elife.92443.1 on eLife
  2. Version published to 10.7554/elife.92443 on eLife
  3. eLife

    eLife assessment

    Richevaux and colleagues conducted a valuable study that investigated the integration of thalamic and retrosplenial inputs in the dorsal presubiculum, an essential hippocampal region involved in spatial navigation and memory. Through ex vivo optogenetic electrophysiological experiments, they discovered that many presubicular pyramidal cells receive convergent inputs from both the anterior thalamus and the retrosplenial cortex. These solid findings provide a potential cellular mechanism for anchoring the brain's internal compass to external landmarks, shedding light on how the brain integrates spatial information with an animal's sense of its position in space.

  4. eLife

    Reviewer #1 (Public Review):

    Summary:
    In this manuscript, the authors use anatomical tracing and slice physiology to investigate the integration of thalamic (ATN) and retrosplenial cortical (RSC) signals in the dorsal presubiculum (PrS). This work will be of interest to the field, as the postsubiculum is thought to be a key region for integrating internal head direction representations with external landmarks. The main result is that ATN and RSC inputs drive the same L3 PrS neurons, which exhibit superlinear summation to near-coincident inputs. Moreover, this activity can induce bursting in L4 PrS neurons, which can pass the signals LMN (perhaps gated by cholinergic input).

    Strengths:
    The slice physiology experiments are carefully done. The analyses are clear and convincing, and the figures and results are well-composed. Overall, these results will be a welcome addition to the field.

    Weaknesses:
    The conclusions about the circuit-level function of L3 PrS neurons sometimes outstrip the data, and their model of the integration of these inputs is unclear. I would recommend some revision of the introduction and discussion. I also had some minor comments about the experimental details and analysis.

    Specific major comments:

    1. I found that the authors' claims sometimes outstrip their data, given that there were no in vivo recordings during behavior. For example, in the abstract, their results indicate "that layer 3 neurons can transmit a visually matched HD signal to medial entorhinal cortex", and in the conclusion they state "[...] cortical RSC projections that carry visual landmark information converge on layer 3 pyramidal cells of the dorsal presubiculum". However, they never measured the nature of the signals coming from ATN and RSC to L3 PrS (or signals sent to downstream regions). Their claim is somewhat reasonable with respect to ATN, where the majority of neurons encode HD, but neurons in RSC encode a vast array of spatial and non-spatial variables other than landmark information (e.g., head direction, egocentric boundaries, allocentric position, spatial context, task history to name a few), so making strong claims about the nature of the incoming signals is unwarranted.

    2. Related to the first point, the authors hint at, but never explain, how coincident firing of ATN and RSC inputs would help anchor HD signals to visual landmarks. Although the lesion data (Yoder et al. 2011 and 2015) support their claims, it would be helpful if the proposed circuit mechanism was stated explicitly (a schematic of their model would be helpful in understanding the logic). For example, how do neurons integrate the "right" sets of landmarks and HD signals to ensure stable anchoring? Moreover, it would be helpful to discuss alternative models of HD-to-landmark anchoring, including several studies that have proposed that the integration may (also?) occur in RSC (Page & Jeffrey, 2018; Yan, Burgess, Bicanski, 2021; Sit & Goard, 2023). Currently, much of the Discussion simply summarizes the results of the study, this space could be better used in mapping the findings to the existing literature on the overarching question of how HD signals are anchored to landmarks.

  5. eLife

    Reviewer #2 (Public Review):

    Richevaux et al investigate how anterior thalamic (AD) and retrosplenial (RSC) inputs are integrated by single presubicular (PrS) layer 3 neurons. They show that these two inputs converge onto single PrS layer 3 principal cells. By performing dual-wavelength photostimulation of these two inputs in horizontal slices, the authors show that in most layer 3 cells, these inputs summate supra-linearly. They extend the experiments by focusing on putative layer 4 PrS neurons, and show that they do not receive direct anterior thalamic nor retrosplenial inputs; rather, they are (indirectly) driven to burst firing in response to strong activation of the PrS network.

    This is a valuable study, that investigates an important question - how visual landmark information (possibly mediated by retrosplenial inputs) converges and integrates with HD information (conveyed by the AD nucleus of the thalamus) within PrS circuitry. The data indicate that near-coincident activation of retrosplenial and thalamic inputs leads to non-linear integration in target layer 3 neurons, thereby offering a potential biological basis for landmark + HD binding.

    The main limitations relate to the anatomical annotation of 'putative' PrS L4 neurons, and to the presentation of retrosplenial/thalamic input modularity. Specifically, more evidence should be provided to convincingly demonstrate that the 'putative L4 neurons' of the PrS are not distal subicular neurons (as the authors' anatomy and physiology experiments seem to indicate). The modularity of thalamic and retrosplenial inputs could be better clarified in relation to the known PrS modularity.

  6. eLife

    Reviewer #3 (Public Review):

    Summary:
    The authors sought to determine, at the level of individual presubiculum pyramidal cells, how allocentric spatial information from the retrosplenial cortex was integrated with egocentric information from the anterior thalamic nuclei. Employing a dual opsin optogenetic approach with patch clamp electrophysiology, Richevaux, and colleagues found that around three-quarters of layer 3 pyramidal cells in the presubiculum receive monosynaptic input from both brain regions. While some interesting questions remain (e.g. the role of inhibitory interneurons in gating the information flow and through different layers of presubiculum, this paper provides valuable insights into the microcircuitry of this brain region and the role that it may play in spatial navigation).

    Strengths:
    One of the main strengths of this manuscript was that the dual opsin approach allowed the direct comparison of different inputs within an individual neuron, helping to control for what might otherwise have been an important source of variation. The experiments were well-executed and the data was rigorously analysed. The conclusions were appropriate to the experimental questions and were well-supported by the results. These data will help to inform in vivo experiments aimed at understanding the contribution of different brain regions in spatial navigation and could be valuable for computational modelling.

    Weaknesses:
    Some attempts were made to gain mechanistic insights into how inhibitory neurotransmission may affect processing in the presubiculum (e.g. Figure 5) but these experiments were a little underpowered and the analysis carried out could have been more comprehensively undertaken, as was done for other experiments in the manuscript.

  7. Version published to 10.1101/2023.03.16.533014v3 on bioRxiv
  8. Version published to 10.1101/2023.03.16.533014v2 on bioRxiv
  9. Version published to 10.1101/2023.03.16.533014v1 on bioRxiv