Nucleus reuniens gates selective hippocampal-prefrontal interactions during NREM sleep

Nucleus reuniens (RE) ripple-like activity during rat NREM sleep peaks at 120 Hz and lasts 45 ms, and it is linked to strong thalamic spiking recruitment.

• Why it matters: Memory consolidation depends on coordinated hippocampal–medial prefrontal synchrony, but how the RE hub gates hippocampal engagement with prefrontal circuits during sleep is unclear.
• What they did: Using in vivo electrophysiology in rats, the authors detected RE ripples during NREM sleep and tested phase-locking to hippocampal sharp wave-ripples and mPFC ripples, alongside thalamic spiking recruitment.
• The result: RE ripple activity was phase-locked to both hippocampal and mPFC ripples, and HC–mPFC ripple coupling mainly involved co-occurring RE ripples, suggesting RE organizes hippocampal-to-prefrontal engagement during sleep.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.