ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Behav. Neurosci.
Sec. Learning and Memory
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1669111
This article is part of the Research TopicTheta rhythm generation in learning and memory: cognitive processes and neurological applicationsView all 6 articles
Oscillations in the prefrontal-hippocampal circuit couple to respiration-related oscillations during all phases of a working memory task
Provisionally accepted
- 1Neurobiology Department, School of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, United States
- 2Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, United States
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Oscillatory activity is thought to coordinate neural computations across brain regions, and theta oscillations are critical for learning and memory. Because respiration-related oscillations (RROs) in rodents can be identified in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the hippocampus in addition to canonical theta oscillations, we asked whether odor-cued working memory may be supported by both of these two oscillations. We first confirmed that RROs were propagated to the hippocampus and PFC and that RRO frequency spans a broad range that partially overlaps with canonical theta frequency. During all task phases, we found coherence between PFC and hippocampus at the RRO frequency, irrespective of whether RROs and canonical theta oscillations overlapped or differed in frequency. In parallel, there was also high coherence across PFC and hippocampus at theta frequency, except that the coupling at theta was weakest during odor sampling. Therefore, long-range coordination between brain regions occurs at more than one oscillation frequency in a working memory task, but the two types of oscillations did not show evidence of conjunctively supporting working memory.
Keywords: Respiration-related oscillations, theta oscillations, Hippocampus, Prefrontal Cortex, Local Field Potentials, Odor-guided memory task
Received: 18 Jul 2025; Accepted: 30 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Srikanth, Le, Hu, Leutgeb and Leutgeb. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Stefan Leutgeb, sleutgeb@ucsd.edu
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