Parvalbumin interneuron in the ventral hippocampus functions as a discriminator in social memory

Abstract

Significance Recent studies have identified the hippocampal projection neurons and related pathways that encode and keep social information about familiar conspecifics. On the other side of the coin, however, the neural mechanism for animals to determine the stranger in a group achieved little attention. Here, we demonstrate that ventral CA1 parvalbumin interneurons (vCA1-PVIs) specifically participated in retrieval of social information, and their excitation is crucial for distinguishing novel from familiar conspecifics. These findings not only highlight the importance of hippocampal interneurons in social memory, but also contribute to establish the relationship between PVIs’ deficits and impaired social memory in some psychiatric illnesses.