Hippocampus
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Learning and memory deficits associated with age-related mild cognitive impairment have long been attributed to impaired processing within the hippocampus. Hyperactivity within the hippocampal CA3 region that is associated with aging is mediated in part by a loss of functional inhibitory interneurons and thought to underlie impaired performance in spatial memory tasks, including the abnormal tendency in aged animals to pattern complete spatial representations. Here, we asked whether the spatial firing patterns of simultaneously recorded CA3 and CA1 neurons in young and aged rats could be manipulated pharmacologically to selectively reduce CA3 hyperactivity and thus, according to hypothesis, the associated abnormality in spatial representations. ⋯ This is consistent with drug enhancing the specificity of neuronal firing with respect to spatial location. Contrary to expectation, however, LEV + VPA reduces place cell discrimination between novel and familiar environments, i.e., spatial correlations increase, independent of age even though drug enhances performance in cognitive tasks. The results demonstrate that spatial information content, or the number of bits of information encoded per action potential, may be the key correlate for enhancement of spatial memory by LEV + VPA.