The role of nitric oxide in pre-synaptic plasticity and homeostasis
By N. Hardingham, J. Dachtler, Kevin Fox. 2013
267 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Since the observation that nitric oxide (NO) can act as an intercellular messenger in the brain, the past 25 years have witnessed the steady accumulation of evidence that it acts pre-synaptically at both glutamatergic and GABAergic synapses to alter release-probability in synaptic plasticity. NO does so by acting on the synaptic machinery involved in transmitter release and, in a coordinated fashion, on vesicular recycling mechanisms. In this review, we examine the body of evidence for NO acting as a retrograde factor at synapses, and the evidence from in vivo and in vitro studies that specifically establish NOS1 (neuronal nitric oxide synthase) as the important isoform of NO synthase in this process. The NOS1 isoform is found at two very different locations and at two different spatial scales both in the cortex and hippocampus. On the one hand it is located diffusely in the cytoplasm of a small population of GABAergic neurons and on the other hand the alpha isoform is located discretely at the post-synaptic density (PSD) in spines of pyramidal cells. The present evidence is that the number of NOS1 molecules that exist at the PSD are so low that a spine can only give rise to modest concentrations of NO and therefore only exert a very local action. The NO receptor guanylate cyclase is located both pre- and post-synaptically and this suggests a role for NO in the coordination of local pre- and post-synaptic function during plasticity at individual synapses. Recent evidence shows that NOS1 is also located post-synaptic to GABAergic synapses and plays a pre-synaptic role in GABAergic plasticity as well as glutamatergic plasticity. Studies on the function of NO in plasticity at the cellular level are corroborated by evidence that NO is also involved in experience-dependent plasticity in the cerebral cortex.
Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Physiology
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
- Friedemann Zenke
- Surya Ganguli
- Wulfram Gerstner
- G. Lietzau
- Janusz Morys
- E. Czuba
- Monika Waskow
- A. Steliga
In Physiology
Citations in the corpus
- The temporal paradox of Hebbian learning and homeostatic plasticity (2017, background): “For example, nitric oxide (NO), which is involved in synaptic homeostasis and plasticity [86], is released in response to increased NMDA activity and decays within some tens of seconds [87].”
- BDNF: A Key Factor with Multipotent Impact on Brain Signaling and Synaptic Plasticity (2017, background): “It has been reported that BDNF-induced increase in NO triggers expression of CREB-dependent genes, which finally results in stimulation of dendritic arborization and enhancement of long-lasting effects of synaptic potentiation (Hardingham et al. 2013; Nott et al. 2008; Riccio et al. 2006).”