The temporal lobe of the cortex plays a critical role both in memory formation and spatial navigation. Disfunction of this brain area can cause debilitating illnesses (epilepsy, Alzheimer-disease) which are accompanied by severe cognitive deficits. Multiple level of information from other brain areas is being processed within the so-called “entorhino-hippocampal loop” in the temporal cortex during formation and consolidation of memory traces. Growing body of studies investigated the circuitry within the hippocampus, meanwhile our knowledge about the entorhinal cortical microcircuits are limited mostly due to technical limitations. Current models of microcircuit functions in the entorhinal cortex are largely based on knowledge gained in other cortical areas, however, the cytoarchitecture and firing properties of the neurons in entorhinal cortex predict unique information processing motifs in this brain area. Recently, we have shown the specific division of labor between inhibitory circuits (Varga et al. 2010 Nature Neurosci) which largely contributes to the salient features of entorhinal cortical microcircuits. In our laboratory, we interrogate the effect of several inhibitory systems on the computational power of the entorhinal cortex. We use in vivo electrophysiology, optogenetics, immunohistochemistry, light and electron microscopy in order to understand the normal and diseased activities within the entorhinal cortex.
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