Induction and Consolidation of Calcium-Based Homo- and Heterosynaptic Potentiation and Depression

PLoS One. 2016 Aug 25;11(8):e0161679. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0161679. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

The adaptive mechanisms of homo- and heterosynaptic plasticity play an important role in learning and memory. In order to maintain plasticity-induced changes for longer time scales (up to several days), they have to be consolidated by transferring them from a short-lasting early-phase to a long-lasting late-phase state. The underlying processes of this synaptic consolidation are already well-known for homosynaptic plasticity, however, it is not clear whether the same processes also enable the induction and consolidation of heterosynaptic plasticity. In this study, by extending a generic calcium-based plasticity model with the processes of synaptic consolidation, we show in simulations that indeed heterosynaptic plasticity can be induced and, furthermore, consolidated by the same underlying processes as for homosynaptic plasticity. Furthermore, we show that by local diffusion processes the heterosynaptic effect can be restricted to a few synapses neighboring the homosynaptically changed ones. Taken together, this generic model reproduces many experimental results of synaptic tagging and consolidation, provides several predictions for heterosynaptic induction and consolidation, and yields insights into the complex interactions between homo- and heterosynaptic plasticity over a broad variety of time (minutes to days) and spatial scales (several micrometers).

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Calcium / pharmacology*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Electric Stimulation
  • Hippocampus / physiology
  • Humans
  • Long-Term Potentiation*
  • Memory
  • Models, Neurological
  • Models, Statistical
  • Neuronal Plasticity*
  • Neurons / physiology
  • Poisson Distribution
  • Synapses / drug effects*

Substances

  • Calcium

Grants and funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 (Programme and Theme: ICT-2011.2.1, Cognitive Systems and Robotics) under grant agreement no. 600578 as well as from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) Germany to the Goettingen Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Project D1; Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, grant no. 01GQ1005B; and was partially supported by the University of Southern Denmark through its grant to the Centre for BioRobotics. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.