Subregional activity in the dentate gyrus is amplified during elevated cognitive demands.
Overview
- Department of Neuroscience, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University Chicago United States
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine Chicago United States
- Department of Neurobiology, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University Chicago United States
Abstract
Neural activity in the dentate gyrus (DG) supports the detection and discrimination of novelty, context, and patterns. Granule cell activation differs between the supra- and infrapyramidal blades across hippocampal-dependent tasks, yet how excitatory dynamics shape this blade-specific bias under varying cognitive demands remains unclear. Here, we combined an automated touchscreen pattern separation task in mice with temporally controlled tagging of active neurons to determine how increasing cognitive demand influences spatial activity patterns in the DG. As task difficulty increased, activation became progressively biased toward the suprapyramidal blade and was accompanied by structured distributions of active mature granule cells (mGCs) along both the radial and transverse axes. Selective inhibition of mGCs did not alter these spatial patterns, but profoundly impaired performance, as mice were no longer able to discriminate between closely spaced locations. In contrast, chemogenetic inhibition of adult-born dentate granule cells (abDGCs) beyond a critical maturation window impaired performance under high-demand conditions, increased overall mGC activity, and disrupted blade-specific organization even in animals that successfully completed the task. These findings demonstrate that high cognitive demand recruits spatially organized mGC activity and support a modulatory role for abDGCs in shaping dentate circuit dynamics.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
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Data
Datasets cited
- zenodo:19209813, at Zenodo; found in “Data availability”
Data availability
All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are available in the manuscript and/
The following dataset was generated:
CastillonCCM OtsukaS ArmstrongJN ContractorA 2026Subregional activity in the dentate gyrus is amplified during elevated cognitive demandsZenodo10.5281/
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
Versions
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Version 1, 28 September 2026: the first record
Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, pages, dates, 4 authors, 7 keywords, 7 MeSH terms, 1 funder, 62 references, 7 RRIDs.
Cite
This paper
Castillon, C. C., Otsuka, S., Armstrong, J. N., & Contractor, A. (2026). Subregional activity in the dentate gyrus is amplified during elevated cognitive demands. eLife, 15, RP109611. https://
BibTeX
@article{castillon2026su
author = {Castillon, Charlotte CM and Otsuka, Shintaro and Armstrong, John N and Contractor, Anis},
title = {{Subregional activity in the dentate gyrus is amplified during elevated cognitive demands}},
journal = {eLife},
year = {2026},
month = may,
volume = {15},
pages = {RP109611},
publisher = {eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd},
issn = {2050-084X},
doi = {10.7554/
url = {https://
pmid = {42133696},
pmcid = {PMC13175573}
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
AU - Castillon, Charlotte CM
AU - Otsuka, Shintaro
AU - Armstrong, John N
AU - Contractor, Anis
TI - Subregional activity in the dentate gyrus is amplified during elevated cognitive demands
T2 - eLife
J2 - Elife
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/
VL - 15
SP - RP109611
SN - 2050-084X
PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
DO - 10.7554/
UR - https://
LA - en
ER -
CSL-JSON
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"language": "en",
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