Quantal components of the end‐plate potential

Castillo, J. del; Katz, Bernard

doi:10.1113/jphysiol.1954.sp005129

Cited by 2,064 publications

(905 citation statements)

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“…Revealing the locus of alterations during synaptic plasticity has been facilitated by the development of quantitative models (del Castillo and Katz, 1954a;Tsodyks and Markram, 1997;Varela et al, 1997;Dittman et al, 2000). The most widely accepted model (quantal) (del Castillo and Katz, 1954a) successfully describes transmission at the neuromuscular junction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quantal Size Is Independent of the Release Probability at Hippocampal Excitatory Synapses

Biró¹,

Holderith²,

Nusser³

2005

J. Neurosci.

109

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Short-term synaptic plasticity changes the reliability of transmission during repetitive activation and allows different neuronal ensembles to encode distinct features of action potential trains. Identifying the mechanisms and the locus of expression of such plasticity is essential for understanding neuronal information processing. To determine the quantal parameters and the locus of alterations during short-term plasticity of cortical glutamatergic synapses, EPSCs were evoked in hippocampal oriens-alveus interneurons by CA1 pyramidal cells. The robust short-term facilitation of this connection allowed us to examine the transmission under functionally relevant but widely different release probability (P r ) conditions. Paired whole-cell recordings permitted the functional and post hoc morphological characterization of the synapses. To determine the quantal size (q), the P r , and the number of functional release sites (N F ), two independent quantal analysis methods were used. Light and electron microscopy were performed to identify the number of synaptic junctions (N EM ) between the recorded cells. The mean number of functional release sites (N F(f) ϭ 2.9 Ϯ 0.4; n ϭ 8) as inferred from a simple binomial model with no quantal variance agreed well with the mean of N EM (2.8 Ϯ 0.8; n ϭ 6), but N F(f) never matched N EM when they were compared in individual pairs; however, including quantal variance in the model improved the functional prediction of the structural data. Furthermore, an increased P r (4.8 Ϯ 0.8-fold) fully accounted for the marked short-term facilitation of EPSCs (5.0 Ϯ 0.7-fold), and q was independent of P r . Our results are consistent with the "one-release site, one-vesicle" hypothesis.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most widely accepted model (quantal) (del Castillo and Katz, 1954a) successfully describes transmission at the neuromuscular junction. Katz's hypothesis that neurotransmitters are released in discrete quanta in a probabilistic manner has been widely accepted to be true also at central synapses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantal Size Is Independent of the Release Probability at Hippocampal Excitatory Synapses

Biró¹,

Holderith²,

Nusser³

2005

J. Neurosci.

109

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show abstract

“…Since multiple analysis protocols are utilized in the synaptic transmission field (Del Castillo and Katz, 1954;Cooper et al, 1995bCooper et al, , 1996Viele et al, 2003) to estimate the number of release sites and the probability of release, we provide the original values for further computational assessment by other investigators using their analysis protocol of choice.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Actions of MDMA at glutamatergic neuromuscular junctions

Sparks

Dasari

Cooper

2004

Neuroscience Research

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Abstract3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "Ecstasy") compels mammalian serotonergic neurons to release serotonin (5-HT). In this study, MDMA altered synaptic transmission presynaptically by enhancing quantal release in two model glutamatergic synapses-the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) of the crayfish opener muscle, which is enhanced by exogenous 5-HT application, and the NMJ of a larval body wall muscle in Drosophila melanogaster, which is insensitive to exogenous 5-HT application. At the crayfish NMJ, MDMA mimicked the actions of 5-HT but only at a substantially higher concentration. At the Drosophila NMJ, MDMA altered synaptic transmission but not through a 5-HT receptor.Using simple invertebrate preparations, we have demonstrated an additional non-serotonergic mechanism of MDMA activity that has not yet been addressed in vertebrate systems and that may play an important role in understanding the mechanism of action for a commonly abused drug.

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“…it is unstable. One physiologically inspired solution to this is to introduce spontaneous synaptic release (del Castillo & Katz 1954). In order to maintain the activity of the neurons of the network at constant levels, miniature (low-amplitude) excitatory potentials (synaptic release) were introduced at all synapses and modelled as Poisson noise.…”

Section: Synaptic Releasementioning

confidence: 99%

Sensory experience modifies spontaneous state dynamics in a large-scale barrel cortical model

et al. 2012

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While the neuronal activity of the cerebral cortex is strongly modulated by sensory inputs, the cortex also exhibits rich spontaneous dynamics. Experimental evidence suggests that sensory stimulation may shape the spontaneous activity of the cortex, which in turn can influence its responses to further external stimulation. However, we still do not understand how sensory stimuli affect the underlying neural circuitry. Here we study whether spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) can mediate sensory-induced modifications in the spontaneous dynamics of a new large-scale model of layers II, III and IV of the rodent barrel cortex. A central feature of our model is its level of physiological detail, including the types of neurons present, the probabilities and delays of connections, and the STDP profiles at each excitatory synapse. We stimulated the neuronal network with a protocol of repeated sensory inputs, resembling those generated by the protraction-retraction motion of whiskers when rodents explore their environment, and studied the changes in network dynamics. By applying dimensionality reduction techniques to the synaptic weight space, we show that the trajectories converge to an initial spontaneous attractor state, which is modified by each repetition of the stimulus. This reverberation of the sensory experience induces long-term modifications in the synaptic weight space. The post-stimulus spontaneous state encodes a unique memory of the stimulus presented, since a different dynamical response is observed when the network is presented with shuffled stim- uli. These results suggest that repeated exposure to the same sensory experience could induce long-term circuitry modifications via 'Hebbian' STDP plasticity.

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Quantal components of the end‐plate potential

Cited by 2,064 publications

References 9 publications

Quantal Size Is Independent of the Release Probability at Hippocampal Excitatory Synapses

Quantal Size Is Independent of the Release Probability at Hippocampal Excitatory Synapses

Actions of MDMA at glutamatergic neuromuscular junctions

Sensory experience modifies spontaneous state dynamics in a large-scale barrel cortical model

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