Dendritic Spines Linearize the Summation of Excitatory Potentials

In mammalian cortex, most excitatory inputs occur on dendritic spines, avoiding dendritic shafts. Although spines biochemically isolate inputs, nonspiny neurons can also implement biochemical compartmentalization; so, it is possible that spines have an additional function. We have recently shown tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2006-12, Vol.103 (49), p.18799-18804
Main Authors: Araya, Roberto, Eisenthal, Kenneth B., Yuste, Rafael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biochemistry
Biological Sciences
Dendrites
Dendritic spines
Dendritic Spines - chemistry
Dendritic Spines - physiology
Depolarization
Excitatory Postsynaptic Potentials - physiology
Glutamates
Imaging
Indoles
Integration
Lasers
Linear programming
Membrane filters
Membrane potential
Mice
Mice, Inbred C57BL
Neck
Neurons
Neuroscience
Pyramidal cells
Spine
Staining and Labeling
Visual Cortex - chemistry
Visual Cortex - physiology
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Summary:In mammalian cortex, most excitatory inputs occur on dendritic spines, avoiding dendritic shafts. Although spines biochemically isolate inputs, nonspiny neurons can also implement biochemical compartmentalization; so, it is possible that spines have an additional function. We have recently shown that the spine neck can filter membrane potentials going into and out of the spine. To investigate the potential function of this electrical filtering, we used two-photon uncaging of glutamate and compared the integration of electrical signals in spines vs. dendritic shafts from basal dendrites of mouse layer 5 pyramidal neurons. Uncaging potentials onto spines summed linearly, whereas potentials on dendritic shafts reduced each other's effect. Linear integration of spines was maintained regardless of the amplitude of the response, distance between spines (as close as
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0609225103