Hippocampal ripples coincide with “up-state” and cortical spindles in Retrosplenial Cortex

During NREM sleep hippocampal Sharp-wave ripples (SWR) events are thought to stabilize memory traces for long-term storage in downstream neocortical structures. Within the neocortex, Default Mode Network (DMN) areas interact preferentially with the hippocampus purportedly to consolidate those traces. Transient bouts of slow oscillations and sleep spindles in DMN areas are often observed around SWRs, suggesting that these two activities are related and that their interplay possibly contributes to memory consolidation. To investigate how SWRs interact with the DMN and spindles, we combined cortical wide-field voltage imaging, ECoG, and hippocampal LFP recordings in anesthetized and sleeping mice. Here we show that, during SWR, “up-states” and spindles reliably co-occur in a cortical subnetwork centered around the Retrosplenial cortex. Furthermore, Retrosplenial transient activations and spindles predict Slow Gamma oscillations in CA1 during SWRs. Together, our results suggest that Retrosplenial-hippocampal interaction may be a central source of information exchange between cortex and hippocampus.