Astrocytes: Orchestrating synaptic plasticity?
Abstract
Synaptic plasticity is the capacity of a preexisting connection between two neurons
to change in strength as a function of neural activity. Because synaptic plasticity
is the major candidate mechanism for learning and memory, the elucidation of its constituting
mechanisms is of crucial importance in many aspects of normal and pathological brain
function. In particular, a prominent aspect that remains debated is how the plasticity
mechanisms, that encompass a broad spectrum of temporal and spatial scales, come to
play together in a concerted fashion. Here we review and discuss evidence that pinpoints
to a possible non-neuronal, glial candidate for such orchestration: the regulation
of synaptic plasticity by astrocytes.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23351Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1016/j.neuroscience.2015.04.001Publication Info
De Pittà, M; Brunel, N; & Volterra, A (2016). Astrocytes: Orchestrating synaptic plasticity?. Neuroscience, 323. pp. 43-61. 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2015.04.001. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23351.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Nicolas Brunel
Duke School of Medicine Distinguished Professor in Neuroscience
We use theoretical models of brain systems to investigate how they process and learn
information from their inputs. Our current work focuses on the mechanisms of learning
and memory, from the synapse to the network level, in collaboration with various experimental
groups. Using methods fromstatistical physics, we have shown recently that the synapticconnectivity
of a network that maximizes storage capacity reproducestwo key experimentally observed
features: low connection proba

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