The Contribution of Single Synapses to Sensory Representation in Vivo

By A. Arenz, R. Silver, Andreas T. Schaefer, Troy W. Margrie. 2008

196 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The extent to which synaptic activity can signal a sensory stimulus limits the information available to a neuron. We determined the contribution of individual synapses to sensory representation by recording excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) in cerebellar granule cells during a time-varying, quantifiable vestibular stimulus. Vestibular-sensitive synapses faithfully reported direction and velocity, rather than position or acceleration of whole-body motion, via bidirectional modulation of EPSC frequency. The lack of short-term synaptic dynamics ensured a highly linear relationship between velocity and charge transfer, and as few as 100 synapses provided resolution approaching psychophysical limits. This indicates that highly accurate stimulus representation can be achieved by small networks and even within single neurons.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurology

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Citations in the corpus

Re-evaluating circuit mechanisms underlying pattern separation (2019, positive): “…that they increase the SNR of their inputs by averaging similarly tuned mossy fibres (Ekerot, and Jörntell, 2008; Bengtsson and Jörntell, 2009), while other studies have found evidence of multimodal integration (Arenz et al., 2008; Huang et al., 2013; Chabrol et al., 2015; Ishikawa et al., 2015).”
NMDA receptors with incomplete Mg2+ block enable low-frequency transmission through the cerebellar cortex (2012, background): “The slow kinetics of these currents are well matched to the relatively slow time scale of vestibular (Arenz et al., 2008; Barmack and Yakhnitsa, 2008), joint position (van Kan et al.”
Synaptic representation of locomotion in single cerebellar granule cells (2015, background): “…number of excitatory inputs—4 on average (Eccles et al., 1967; Palkovits et al., 1971; Jakab and Hamori, 1988)—which allows for individual synaptic inputs to be resolved in vivo (Chadderton et al., 2004; Jörntell and Ekerot, 2006; Rancz et al., 2007; Arenz et al., 2008; Chadderton et al., 2014).”
Multimodal sensory integration in single cerebellar granule cells in vivo (2015, background): “45% of granule cells (60/133 cells) in crus I and II and 10% of those (3/30 cells) in the dorsal paraflocculus responded to somatosensory stimulation with a burst of EPSCs (Figure 1A–”
The cerebellar microcircuit as an adaptive filter: experimental and computational evidence (2010, background): “The technical difficulties associated with recording from granule cells in vivo have only recently been overcom”
At the Edge of Chaos: How Cerebellar Granular Layer Network Dynamics Can Provide the Basis for Temporal Filters (2015, background): “Furthermore also most granule cells can be separated into type 1 and type 2 activity as shown by extracellular [77] and internal EPSP recordings in anesthetized mice [78].”
Widespread State-Dependent Shifts in Cerebellar Activity in Locomoting Mice (2012, background): “MFs can also fire in complex ongoing patterns to represent joint movement [6] and vestibular activity [7].”
Rapid Desynchronization of an Electrically Coupled Interneuron Network with Sparse Excitatory Synaptic Input (2010, unknown): “, 1993) and head velocity (Arenz et al., 2008; Barmack and Yakhnitsa, 2008) with a modest and relatively slow bidirectional modulation of their firing rate (Barmack and Yakhnitsa, 2008; Edgley and Lidierth, 1987).”
Purkinje cells directly inhibit granule cells in specialized regions of the cerebellar cortex (2016, unknown): “…inhibition may be important in regions where PC to GrC feedback is observed because vestibular inputs to these regions are excitatory, fire rapidly (Arenz et al., 2008; Barmack and Yakhnitsa, 2008; Lisberger and Fuchs, 1978b), and could evoke spontaneous firing in a large fraction of GrCs in the…”
Multimodal integration in granule cells as a basis for associative plasticity and sensory prediction in a cerebellum-like circuit. (2010, unknown): “In contrast, recordings from the cerebellum of anesthetized rodents have provided indirect evidence for multimodal integration, though different classes of MFs were not systematically engaged in this study (Arenz et al., 2008).”