Disorganized Inhibitory Dynamics and Functional Connectivity in Hippocampal area CA1 of 22q11.2 Deletion Mutant Mice.

A recent study examined the effects of the 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, a genetic risk factor for schizophrenia, on cognitive impairments and hippocampal neural dynamics in a mouse model. The study found that inhibitory interneurons in the hippocampus of mutant mice exhibited reduced spatial information during random foraging and aberrant responses to reward locations during reward learning tasks. The researchers also observed task-dependent changes in the activity of multiple GABAergic subtypes, indicating a disorganized microcircuit functional connectivity in the mutant mice. This study provides new insights into how schizophrenia-risk mutations affect local-circuit interactions in the mouse hippocampus during learning. [Extracted from the article]