Spatial integration of dendrites in fast-spiking basket cells

Abstract

Dendrites of fast-spiking basket cells (FS BCs) impact neural circuit functions in brain with both supralinear and sublinear integration strategies. Diverse spatial synaptic inputs and active properties of dendrites lead to distinct neuronal firing patterns. How the FS BCs with this bi-modal dendritic integration respond to different spatial dispersion of synaptic inputs remains unclear. In this study, we construct a multi-compartmental model of FS BC and analyze neuronal firings following simulated synaptic protocols from fully clustered to fully dispersed. Under these stimulation protocols, we find that supralinear dendrites dominate somatic firing of FS BC, while the preference for dispersing is due to sublinear dendrites. Moreover, we find that dendritic diameter and Ca²⁺-permeable AMPA conductance play an important role in it, while A-type K⁺ channel and NMDA conductance have little effect. The obtained results may give some implications for understanding dendritic computation.

Keywords: compartmental model; dendritic non-linearity; fast-spiking basket cells; hippocampus; spatial integration.