Nature Neuroscience 8, 1667 - 1676 (2005)
Published online: 20 November 2005; | doi:10.1038/nn1599
Conditional dendritic spike propagation following distal synaptic activation of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neuronsTim Jarsky1, 4, Alex Roxin2, 3, 4, William L Kath1, 2
& Nelson Spruston11
Institute for Neuroscience, Department of Neurobiology and Physiology, Northwestern University, 2205 Tech Drive, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA. 2
Department of Engineering Science and Applied Mathematics, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA. 3
Unité Mixte de Recherche 8119, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, Neurophysics and Physiology, Université René Descartes, 45 Rue des Saints Pères, 75270 Paris Cedex 06, France. 4
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence should be addressed to Nelson Spruston spruston@northwestern.edu The perforant-path projection to the hippocampus forms synapses in the apical tuft of CA1 pyramidal neurons. We used computer modeling to examine the function of these distal synaptic inputs, which led to three predictions that we confirmed in experiments using rat hippocampal slices. First, activation of CA1 neurons by the perforant path is limited, a result of the long distance between these inputs and the soma. Second, activation of CA1 neurons by the perforant path depends on the generation of dendritic spikes. Third, the forward propagation of these spikes is unreliable, but can be facilitated by modest activation of Schaffer-collateral synapses in the upper apical dendrites. This 'gating' of dendritic spike propagation may be an important activation mode of CA1 pyramidal neurons, and its modulation by neurotransmitters or long-term, activity-dependent plasticity may be an important feature of dendritic integration during mnemonic processing in the hippocampus.
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