Short-term synaptic dynamics control the activity phase of neurons in an oscillatory network
- New Jersey Institute of Technology, United States
Abstract
In oscillatory systems, neuronal activity phase is often independent of network frequency. Such phase maintenance requires adjustment of synaptic input with network frequency, a relationship that we explored using the crab, Cancer borealis, pyloric network. The burst phase of pyloric neurons is relatively constant despite a >2-fold variation in network frequency. We used noise input to characterize how input shape influences burst delay of a pyloric neuron, and then used dynamic clamp to examine how burst phase depends on the period, amplitude, duration, and shape of rhythmic synaptic input. Phase constancy across a range of periods required a proportional increase of synaptic duration with period. However, phase maintenance was also promoted by an increase of amplitude and peak phase of synaptic input with period. Mathematical analysis shows how short-term synaptic plasticity can coordinately change amplitude and peak phase to maximize the range of periods over which phase constancy is achieved.
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Source data files have been provided for Figures 2 and 7.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (MH060605)
- Dirk M Bucher
- Farzan Nadim
National Science Foundation (DMS1122291)
- Amitabha Bose
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Martinez et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Short-term synaptic dynamics control the activity phase of neurons in an oscillatory network
eLife 8:e46911.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.46911
