neurodudes

Two Coincidence Detectors for Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity in Somatosensory Cortex — Bender et al. 26 (16): 4166 — Journal of Neuroscience

Dan Feldman’s group at UCSD has found that different “sides” of STDP (ie. LTP vs. LTD) at cortical synapses might be mediated through distinct signalling pathways. The major finding was that LTD was induced independent of NMDA receptors. Rather, LTD required mGluRs and VGCCs.

There are many questions here. The most interesting to think about is, Are we going to find different STDP rules all over the brain? And, if so, what will be the commond ground between them?

Here’s the abstract:

Many cortical synapses exhibit spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) in which the precise timing of presynaptic and postsynaptic spikes induces synaptic strengthening [long-term potentiation (LTP)] or weakening [long-term depression (LTD)]. Standard models posit a single, postsynaptic, NMDA receptor-based coincidence detector for LTP and LTD components of STDP. We show instead that STDP at layer 4 to layer 2/3 synapses in somatosensory (S1) cortex involves separate calcium sources and coincidence detection mechanisms for LTP and LTD. LTP showed classical NMDA receptor dependence. LTD was independent of postsynaptic NMDA receptors and instead required group I metabotropic glutamate receptors and calcium from voltage-sensitive channels and IP3 receptor-gated stores. Downstream of postsynaptic calcium, LTD required retrograde endocannabinoid signaling, leading to presynaptic LTD expression, and also required activation of apparently presynaptic NMDA receptors. These LTP and LTD mechanisms detected firing coincidence on ~25 and ~125 ms time scales, respectively, and combined to implement the overall STDP rule. These findings indicate that STDP is not a unitary process and suggest that endocannabinoid-dependent LTD may be relevant to cortical map plasticity.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 1:33 pm by Neville Sanjana and is filed under Cellular learning, Ion channels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.