Acute Neuroinflammation Impairs Context Discrimination Memory and Disrupts Pattern Separation Processes in Hippocampus

Although it is known that immune system activation can impair cognition, no study to date has linked cognitive deficits during acute neuroinflammation to dysregulation of task-relevant neuronal ensemble activity. Here, we assessed both neural circuit activity and context discrimination memory retrieval, in a within-subjects design, of male rats given systemic administration of saline or lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Rats were exposed over several days to two similar contexts: one of which was paired with weak foot shock and the other was not. After reaching criteria for discriminative freezing, rats were given systemic LPS or saline injection and tested for retrieval of context discrimination 6 h later. Importantly, LPS administration produced an acute neuroinflammatory response in dorsal hippocampus at this time (as assessed by elevation of proinflammatory cytokine mRNA levels) and abolished retrieval of the previously acquired discrimination. The impact of neuroinflammation on hippocampal CA3 and CA1 neural circuit activity was assessed using the Arc/Homer1a cellular analysis of temporal activity by fluorescence in situ hybridization imaging method. Whereas the saline-treated subjects discriminated and had low overlap of hippocampal ensembles activated in the two contexts, LPS-treated subjects did not discriminate and had greater ensemble overlap (i.e., reduced orthogonalization). Additionally, retrieval of standard contextual fear conditioning, which does not require context discrimination, was not affected by pretesting LPS administration. Together, the behavioral and circuit analyses data provide compelling evidence that LPS administration impairs context discrimination memory by disrupting cellular pattern separation processes within the hippocampus, thus linking acute neuroinflammation to disruption of specific neural circuit functions and cognitive impairment.