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Glutamate locally activates dendritic outputs of thalamic interneurons

Nature volume 394, pages 478–482 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

The relay of information through thalamus to cortex is dynamically gated, as illustrated by the retinogeniculocortical pathway1. Important to this is the inhibitory interneuron in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). For the typical neuron, synaptic information arrives through postsynaptic dendrites and is transmitted by axon terminals. However, the typical thalamic interneuron, in addition to conventional axonal outputs, has distal dendrites that serve both pre- and postsynaptic roles2,3,4,5,6. These dendritic terminals participate in curious and enigmatic triadic arrangements, in which each contacts a relay cell dendrite and is contacted by a glutamatergic retinal terminal that innervates the same relay cell dendrite. Here we show that agonists of the metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) activate dendritic terminals of interneurons in the absence of action potentials, thereby inhibiting the postsynaptic relay neuron. Somatic recordings from LGN interneurons reveal that there is no response to mGluR agonists, suggesting that their dendritic terminals are electrically isolated from their somata and axons, consistent with anatomical modelling of these cells7. Our results offer insight into the functioning of triadic circuitry and indicate that thalamic interneurons can perform independent computations expressed through axonal as opposed to dendritic outputs.

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Figure 1: Activation of mGluRs increases inhibition in cat LGN relay neurons.
Figure 2: Voltage and current clamp recordings from cat LGN neuron.
Figure 3: Inhibitory innervation of thalamic relay neurons and voltage clamp recording from rat LGN relay neuron.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Eye Institute (NIH).

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  1. Department of Neurobiology, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 11794-5230, New York, USA

    Charles L. Cox, Qiang Zhou & S. Murray Sherman

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  1. Charles L. Cox
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Correspondence to S. Murray Sherman.

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Cox, C., Zhou, Q. & Sherman, S. Glutamate locally activates dendritic outputs of thalamic interneurons. Nature 394, 478–482 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/28855

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