Membrane Potential Dynamics of Hippocampal Neurons During Ripples in Awake Mice

During periods of slow wave sleep and quiet wakefulness, the hippocampal formation generates spontaneous population bursts that are organized as a high-frequency "ripple" oscillation. The neurons that participate in these bursts often replay previously experienced activity patterns encoded during alert behavior, and interfering with ripple generation produces deficits in learning and memory tasks. For these reasons, ripples play a prominent role in theories of memory consolidation and retrieval. While spiking during ripples has been extensively studied, our understanding of the subthreshold behavior of hippocampal neurons during these events remains incomplete. Here, we combine in vivo whole-cell recordings with multisite extracellular and behavioral measurements to study the membrane potential dynamics of hippocampal neurons during ripples in awake mice. We find that the subthreshold depolarization of CA1 pyramidal neurons is uncorrelated with net excitatory input, clarifying the circuit mechanism keeping most neurons silent during ripples. On a finer time scale, the phase delay between intracellular and extracellular ripple oscillations varies systematically with the membrane potential, which is inconsistent with models of intracellular ripple generation involving perisomatic inhibition alone. In addition, we find that membrane potential statistics (mean, variability, distance to threshold) of CA1 pyramidal neurons and dentate granule cells are systematically modulated across brain states, that rapid variations in pupil diameter are reflected in subthreshold fluctuations, and that many neurons begin depolarizing about one second before ripple onset. These results provide evidence that coordinated shifts in the subthreshold dynamics of individual neurons may contribute to the emergence of state-dependent hippocampal activity patterns. Finally, we present evidence that area CA3 provides the major excitatory input to dentate granule cells during ripples and that there are coordinated interactions between hippocampal ripples and population events in the dentate gyrus, both of which inform network-level models of ripple generation