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NMDA receptor–dependent metaplasticity at hippocampal mossy fiber synapses

Nature Neuroscience volume 14, pages 691–693 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Hippocampal mossy fiber synapses have been reported to lack NMDA receptor (NMDAR)-dependent long-term potentiation (LTP) of AMPA excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs), unlike conventional glutamatergic synapses. An explanation for this difference may reside in the relatively low number of NMDARs at these synapses. Because mossy fiber synapses display LTP selective for NMDARs, we examined whether this would affect the plasticity rules at mossy fiber–CA3 synapses in mouse hippocampal slices. We found that LTP of NMDARs serves as a metaplastic switch making mossy fiber synapses competent for generating NMDAR-dependent LTP of AMPA EPSCs.

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Figure 1: LTP of NMDARs acts as a metaplastic switch at hippocampal mossy fiber–CA3 synapses.
Figure 2: STDP-LTP at mossy fiber synapses is dependent on NMDARs and postsynaptic calcium rise.

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Acknowledgements

We thank N. Grosjean, E. Normand and A. Lacquemant for mouse breeding and J. Lourenço, D. Perrais and B. Srikumar for comments. This study was supported by grants from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Conseil Régional d′Aquitaine and the European Commission (EUSynapse Project, contract no. LSHM-CT-2005-019055). N.R. was financed by an EMBO long-term fellowship, M.C. by a Marie Curie grant and F.L. by a fellowship from the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University de Bordeaux, Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience, Bordeaux, France

    Nelson Rebola, Mario Carta, Frederic Lanore, Christophe Blanchet & Christophe Mulle

  2. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience, UMR 5297, Bordeaux, France.,

    Nelson Rebola, Mario Carta, Frederic Lanore, Christophe Blanchet & Christophe Mulle

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  1. Nelson Rebola
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  2. Mario Carta
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  3. Frederic Lanore
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Contributions

N.R., C.B., F.L. and M.C. performed the experiments. N.R. and C.M. designed the experiments and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Christophe Mulle.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Rebola, N., Carta, M., Lanore, F. et al. NMDA receptor–dependent metaplasticity at hippocampal mossy fiber synapses. Nat Neurosci 14, 691–693 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2809

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