During low-frequency firing, action potentials actively invade the dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons. At higher firing rates, however, activity-dependent processes result in the attenuation of back-propagating action potentials, and propagation failures occur at some dendritic branch points. We tested two major hypotheses related to this activity-dependent attenuation of back-propagating action potentials: (1) that it is mediated by a prolonged form of sodium channel inactivation and (2) that it is mediated by a persistent dendritic shunt activated by backpropagating action potentials. We found no evidence for a persistent shunt, but we did find that cumulative, prolonged inactivation of sodium channels develops during repetitive action potential firing. This inactivation is significant after a single action potential and continues to develop during several action potentials thereafter, until a steady-state sodium current is established. Recovery from this form of inactivation is much slower than its induction, but recovery can be accelerated by hyperpolarization. The similarity of these properties to the time and voltage dependence of attenuation and recovery of dendritic action potentials suggests that dendritic sodium channel inactivation contributes to the activity dependence of action potential back-propagation in CA1 neurons. Hence, the biophysical properties of dendritic sodium channels will be important determinants of action potential-mediated effects on synaptic integration and plasticity in hippocampal neurons.
Key words: dendrite; action potential; sodium channels; synaptic integration; pyramidal neuron; activity dependentRecent experiments using simultaneous somatic and dendritic patch-pipette recordings have shown that action potentials are normally initiated in the axon and back-propagate into the dendrites of many types of C NS neurons (for review, see Stuart et al., 1997). These back-propagating action potentials are likely to provide an important spatial signal that influences ongoing synaptic integration and allows for postsynaptic firing in the axon to be associated with presynaptic activity. For example, the induction of activity-dependent changes in synaptic strength such as long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression depend critically on the timing of pre-and postsynaptic inputs (Levy and Steward, 1983;Markram et al., 1997), and one form of LTP has been shown to be blocked by preventing action potentials from back-propagating into the dendrites of hippocampal pyramidal neurons (Magee and Johnston, 1997). These findings demonstrate the importance of understanding the factors that determine the extent and pattern of action potential back-propagation in pyramidal neuron dendrites.Action potential back-propagation in CA1 dendrites is complex. At low frequencies action potentials invade most of the dendritic tree in an active fashion, whereas at higher frequencies action potentials attenuate more and may fail to actively propagate into much of the dendritic tree (C allaway and Ross,...