Pyramidal Neuron Conductance State Gates Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity

By Jary Y. Delgado, J. F. Gómez-González, Niraj S. Desai. 2010

23 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Neocortical neurons in vivo process each of their individual inputs in the context of ongoing synaptic background activity, produced by the thousands of presynaptic partners a typical neuron has. Previous work has shown that background activity affects multiple aspects of neuronal and network function. However, its effect on the induction of spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) is not clear. Here we report that injections of simulated background conductances (produced by a dynamic-clamp system) into pyramidal cells in rat brain slices selectively reduced the magnitude of timing-dependent synaptic potentiation while leaving the magnitude of timing-dependent synaptic depression unchanged. The conductance-dependent suppression also sharpened the STDP curve, with reliable synaptic potentiation induced only when EPSPs and action potentials (APs) were paired within 8 ms of each other. Dual somatic and dendritic patch recordings suggested that the deficit in synaptic potentiation arose from shunting of dendritic EPSPs and APs. Using a biophysically detailed computational model, we were not only able to replicate the conductance-dependent shunting of dendritic potentials, but show that synaptic background can truncate calcium dynamics within dendritic spines in a way that affects potentiation more strongly than depression. This conductance-dependent regulation of synaptic plasticity may constitute a novel homeostatic mechanism that can prevent the runaway synaptic potentiation to which Hebbian networks are vulnerable.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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Citations in the corpus

The temporal paradox of Hebbian learning and homeostatic plasticity (2017, background): “For instance, [74] demonstrated via dynamic-clamp that a simulated increase in total excitatory and inhibitory background conductance, which could originate from elevated levels of network activity, rapidly reduces the amplitude of LTP, but not LTD, of the STDP window.”
Heterosynaptic Plasticity Prevents Runaway Synaptic Dynamics (2013, background): “…et al., 2000; Hardingham et al., 2007), and/or precise balancing of STDP rules for potentiation and depression (Abbott and Nelson, 2000; van Rossum et al., 2000; Kempter et al., 2001; Gütig et al., 2003; Morrison et al., 2007; Babadi and Abbott, 2010; Delgado et al., 2010; Gilson and Fukai, 2011).”