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A Biophysical Basis for the Inter-spike Interaction of Spike-timing-dependent Plasticity

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Abstract

Although spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) is well characterized when pre- and postsynaptic spikes are paired with a given time lag, how this generalizes for more complex spike-trains is unclear. Recent experiments demonstrate that contributions to synaptic plasticity from different spike pairs within a spike train do not add linearly. In the visual cortex conditioning with spike triplets shows that the effect of the first spike pair dominates over the second. Using a previously proposed calcium-dependent plasticity model, we show that short-term synaptic dynamics and interaction between successive back-propagating action potentials (BPAP) may jointly account for the nonlinearities observed. Paired-pulse depression and attenuation of BPAPs are incorporated into the model through the use-dependent depletion of pre- and postsynaptic resources, respectively. Simulations suggest that these processes may play critical roles in determining how STDP operates in the context of natural spike-trains.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Brain and Neural Systems, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Neel T. Shah, Luk Chong Yeung, Leon N. Cooper & Harel Z. Shouval

  2. Department of Physics, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Luk Chong Yeung & Leon N. Cooper

  3. Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Luk Chong Yeung & Leon N. Cooper

  4. Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Yidao Cai & Harel Z. Shouval

Authors
  1. Neel T. Shah
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  2. Luk Chong Yeung
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  3. Leon N. Cooper
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  4. Yidao Cai
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  5. Harel Z. Shouval
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Correspondence to Harel Z. Shouval.

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Shah, N.T., Yeung, L.C., Cooper, L.N. et al. A Biophysical Basis for the Inter-spike Interaction of Spike-timing-dependent Plasticity. Biol Cybern 95, 113–121 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-006-0071-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-006-0071-y

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