Theta synchronization between the hippocampus and the nucleus incertus in urethane-anesthetized rats

Oscillatory coupling between distributed areas can constitute a mechanism for neuronal integration. Theta oscillations provide temporal windows for hippocampal processing and only appear during certain active states of animals. Since previous studies have demonstrated that nucleus incertus (NI) contributes to the generation of hippocampal theta activity, in this paper, we evaluated the oscillatory coupling between both structures. We compared hippocampal and NI field potentials that were simultaneously recorded in urethane-anesthetized rats. Electrical and cholinergic stimulations of the reticularis pontis oralis nucleus have been used as hippocampal theta generation models. The spectral analyses reveal that electrical stimulation induced an increase in theta oscillations in both channels, whose frequencies depended on the intensity of stimulation. The intensity range used simultaneously increased the normalized spectral energy in the fast theta band (6–12 Hz) in HPC and NI. Frequencies within the theta range were found to be very similar in both channels. In order to validate coupling, spectral coherence was inspected. The data reveal that coherence in the high theta band also increased while stimuli were applied. Cholinergic activation progressively increased the main frequency in both structures to reach an asymptotic period with stable peak frequency in the low theta range (3–6 Hz), which could be first observed in NI and lasted about 1,500 s. Coherence in this band reached values close to 1. Taken together, these results support an electrophysiological and functional coupling between the hippocampus and the reticular formation, suggesting NI to be part of a distributed network working at theta frequencies.