Task-specific oscillatory synchronization of prefrontal cortex, nucleus reuniens, and hippocampus during working memory

Working memory requires maintenance of and executive control over task-relevant information on a timescale of seconds. Spatial working memory depends on interactions between hippocampus, for the representation of space, and prefrontal cortex, for executive control. A monosynaptic hippocampal projection to the prefrontal cortex has been proposed to serve this interaction. However, connectivity and inactivation experiments indicate a critical role of the nucleus reuniens in hippocampal-prefrontal communication. We have investigated the dynamics of oscillatory coherence throughout the prefrontal-hippocampal-reuniens network in a touchscreen-based working memory task. We found that coherence at distinct frequencies evolved depending on phase and difficulty of the task. During choice, the reuniens did not participate in enhanced prefrontal-hippocampal theta but in gamma coherence. Strikingly, the reuniens was strongly embedded in performance-related increases in beta coherence, suggesting the execution of top-down control. In addition, we show that during working memory maintenance the prefrontal-hippocampal-reuniens network displays performance-related delay activity.