The hippocampus processes both spatial-temporal information and emotionally salient experiences. To test the functional properties of discrete sets of cells in the dorsal dentate gyrus (dDG), we examined whether chronic optogenetic reactivation of these ensembles was sufficient to modulate social behaviors in mice. We found that chronic reactivation of discrete dDG cell populations in male mice largely did not affect social behaviors in an experience-dependent manner. However, we found that social behavior in a female exposure task was increased following chronic optogenetic stimulation when compared to pre-stimulation levels, suggesting that the protocol led to increased social behavior, although alternative explanations are discussed. Furthermore, multi-region analysis of neural activity did not yield detectable differences in immediate-early gene expression or neurogenesis following chronic optogenetic stimulation. Together, these results suggest that the effects of chronic optogenetic stimulation in the dDG on social behaviors are independent of the contextual experience processed by each cellular ensemble.

海马体处理时空信息和情感上的显着体验。为了测试背齿状回 (dDG) 中离散细胞集的功能特性，我们检查了这些集合的慢性光遗传学重新激活是否足以调节小鼠的社会行为。我们发现雄性小鼠中离散 dDG 细胞群的慢性重新激活在很大程度上不会以依赖于经验的方式影响社会行为。然而，我们发现与刺激前水平相比，女性暴露任务中的社交行为在慢性光遗传学刺激后增加，这表明该协议导致社交行为增加，尽管讨论了其他解释。此外，神经活动的多区域分析没有在慢性光遗传学刺激后立即早期基因表达或神经发生中产生可检测的差异。总之，这些结果表明 dDG 中的慢性光遗传学刺激对社会行为的影响与每个细胞集合处理的情境体验无关。