dendritic spikes amplify the synaptic signal to enhance detection of motion in a simulation of the direction-selective ganglion cell树突突触信号峰值放大来提高运动检测的仿真direction-selective神经节细胞.pdfVIP

Dendritic Spikes Amplify the Synaptic Signal to Enhance Detection of Motion in a Simulation of the Direction-Selective Ganglion Cell 1 2 1 2 Michael J. Schachter , Nicholas Oesch , Robert G. Smith *, W. Rowland Taylor 1 Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America, 2 Casey Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, Oregon Health Science University, Portland, Oregon, United States of America Abstract The On-Off direction-selective ganglion cell (DSGC) in mammalian retinas responds most strongly to a stimulus moving in a specific direction. The DSGC initiates spikes in its dendritic tree, which are thought to propagate to the soma with high probability. Both dendritic and somatic spikes in the DSGC display strong directional tuning, whereas somatic PSPs (postsynaptic potentials) are only weakly directional, indicating that spike generation includes marked enhancement of the directional signal. We used a realistic computational model based on anatomical and physiological measurements to determine the source of the enhancement. Our results indicate that the DSGC dendritic tree is partitioned into separate electrotonic regions, each summing its local excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs to initiate spikes. Within each local region the local spike threshold nonlinearly amplifies the preferred response over the null response on the basis of PSP amplitude. Using inhibitory conductances previously measured in DSGCs, the simulation results showed that inhibition is only sufficient to prevent spike initiation and cannot affect spike propagation. Therefore, inhibition will only act locally within the dendritic arbor. We identified the role of