A neurophysiological analysis of commissural projections to dentate gyrus of the rat.

The electrophysiological properties of the commissural projections to the dentate gyrus of the rat were investigated using extracellular field-potential and unit-recording techniques. The following conclusions with respect to those investigations were obtained: 1) The CA3c/CA4 region of the contralateral hippocampus proved to be the most effective site for eliciting the commissural field potentials in the dentate gyrus dorsal and ventral leaves. 2) The location of the short-latency negative field potential in the molecular layer of the dentate gyrus was restricted to a region 50-100 mum distal to the granule cell layers corresponding to the inner one-third of the granule cell dendrites. 3) The negative field potential proved to satisfy a number of criteria for the extracellular representation of the summed EPSPs of synchronously activated granule cells. 4) The excitatory nature of the commissural projections to the dentate was confirmed by the short-latency driving of units recorded from the granule cell layers. 5) A comparison of both commissural and entorhinal cortical stimulation procedures showed the field potentials elicited by the different convergent anatomical systems to be localized within different regions of the dentate molecular layer. 6) The distribution of commissural potentials along the septotemporal axis of the dentate gyrus indicated that stimulation sites homotopic to the recording electrode in the contralateral CA3c/CA4 region were the most effective in eliciting these potentials. 7) These findings were discussed with reference to the mode of activation of the dentate granule cells by the commissural system with specific comparison to the larger and apparently more powerful projections from the entorhinal cortex.