A team lead by Dr. Liset Menendez de la Prida has discovered that pyramidal cells from the hippocampus, the main brain structure responsible for memory formation , are less uniform than previously thought adopting an organization similar to the neocortex.
Superficial and deep CA1 pyramidal cells operate in a complementary manner, as two layers of parallel processing. The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, could help to better understand diseases affecting the hippocampus, such as epilepsy and Alzheimer's.

Manuel Valero, Elena Cid, Robert G Averkin, Juan Aguilar, Alberto Sanchez-Aguilera, Tim J. Viney, Daniel Gomez-Dominguez, Elisa Bellistri y Liset Menéndez de la Prida. Determinants of different deep/superficial CA1 pyramidal cell dynamics during sharp-wave-ripples. Nature Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1038/nn.4074.