Publication Date:
2002-03-09
Description:
Neurons receive thousands of synaptic inputs throughout elaborate dendritic trees. Here we determine the somatic impact of excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) generated at known dendritic sites in neocortical pyramidal neurons. As inputs became more distal, somatic EPSP amplitude decreased, whereas use-dependent depression increased. Despite marked attenuation (〉40-fold), when coactivated within a narrow time window (approximately 10 milliseconds), distal EPSPs could directly influence action potential output following dendritic spike generation. These findings reveal that distal EPSPs are ineffective sources of background somatic excitation, but through coincidence detection have a powerful transient signaling role.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Williams, Stephen R -- Stuart, Greg J -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2002 Mar 8;295(5561):1907-10.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Division of Neuroscience, John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11884759" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials
;
Animals
;
Axons/physiology
;
Dendrites/*physiology
;
*Excitatory Postsynaptic Potentials
;
Neocortex/cytology/*physiology
;
Patch-Clamp Techniques
;
Pyramidal Cells/*physiology
;
Rats
;
Rats, Wistar
;
Synapses/*physiology
;
Synaptic Transmission
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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