Shannon Farris, Ph.D.

Mitochondrial Diversity at Social Synapses

Abstract: Area CA2 is an understudied region of the hippocampus that has recently gained attention due to its unique capacity to encode social information. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the essential processes in CA2 required for its function in social memory are unknown. We recently discovered that hippocampal CA2 pyramidal neurons have molecularly and functionally distinct mitochondria compared with neighboring CA1 neurons. Specifically, our data point to differences in mitochondrial calcium uptake at distinct synaptic inputs on CA2 dendrites, which we propose confers unique circuit properties essential to CA2 function.