Unique Processing During a Period of High Excitation/Inhibition Balance in Adult-Born Neurons

Abstract

Neurogenesis and Pattern Integration The adult hippocampus continuously produces new neurons that integrate into the dentate gyrus network and contribute to information processing. What features of adult-born neurons are important for information processing in the dentate gyrus? Marín-Burgin et al. (p. 1238 , published online 26 January; see the Perspective by Kempermann ) labeled newborn neurons and used sophisticated electrophysiological and imaging techniques to show that immature neurons integrated a broader variety of synaptic inputs from different origins compared with mature neurons, which were highly input specific. Thus, immature neurons may represent a population of integrators that are broadly tuned during a transient period and may encode most features of incoming information. After maturation, new granule cells display a high activation threshold and input specificity to become good pattern separators.