以色列耶路撒冷希伯来大学Inbal Goshen团队发现，海马星形胶质细胞对奖励位置进行编码。相关论文于2022年8月31日在线发表在《自然》杂志上。

研究人员使用双光子显微镜对CA1星形胶质细胞进行长期成像，因为小鼠在熟悉或新的虚拟环境中奔跑以获得水奖励。研究人员发现，星形胶质细胞在熟悉的环境中对奖励位置表现出持续的斜向活动，但在新的环境中则没有。在熟悉的环境中转移奖励位置也会导致斜向活动的减弱。经过额外的训练，随着小鼠对新环境或新奖励位置的熟悉，斜向活动重新建立。使用线性解码器，研究人员可以仅从星形细胞活动中预测小鼠在熟悉环境中的位置。在新的环境中，研究人员无法做到这一点，这表明星形胶质细胞活动的空间调控是依赖于经验的。这些结果表明，星形胶质细胞可以在空间背景下对预期的奖励位置进行编码，从而扩展其已知的计算能力及其在认知功能中的作用。

据悉，星形胶质细胞的钙离子动态被认为与感觉信息的编码有关，而且星形胶质细胞中钙离子的调节已被证明可以影响行为。然而，对清醒小鼠海马中星形胶质细胞的实时钙离子活动的纵向调查是缺乏的。

附：英文原文

Title: Hippocampal astrocytes encode reward location

Author: Doron, Adi, Rubin, Alon, Benmelech-Chovav, Aviya, Benaim, Netai, Carmi, Tom, Refaeli, Ron, Novick, Nechama, Kreisel, Tirzah, Ziv, Yaniv, Goshen, Inbal

Issue&Volume: 2022-08-31

Abstract: Astrocytic calcium dynamics has been implicated in the encoding of sensory information1,2,3,4,5, and modulation of calcium in astrocytes has been shown to affect behaviour6,7,8,9,10. However, longitudinal investigation of the real-time calcium activity of astrocytes in the hippocampus of awake mice is lacking. Here we used two-photon microscopy to chronically image CA1 astrocytes as mice ran in familiar or new virtual environments to obtain water rewards. We found that astrocytes exhibit persistent ramping activity towards the reward location in a familiar environment, but not in a new one. Shifting the reward location within a familiar environment also resulted in diminished ramping. After additional training, as the mice became familiar with the new context or new reward location, the ramping was re-established. Using linear decoders, we could predict the location of the mouse in a familiar environment from astrocyte activity alone. We could not do the same in a new environment, suggesting that the spatial modulation of astrocytic activity is experience dependent. Our results indicate that astrocytes can encode the expected reward location in spatial contexts, thereby extending their known computational abilities and their role in cognitive functions.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05146-6

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05146-6