reliability of synaptic transmission at the synapses of held in vivo under acoustic stimulation突触的突触传递的可靠性体内声刺激下举行.pdfVIP

Reliability of Synaptic Transmission at the Synapses of Held In Vivo under Acoustic Stimulation 1,2. 2.¤ 2 ¨ 1 ¨ 2 Bernhard Englitz , Sandra Tolnai , Marei Typlt , Jurgen Jost , Rudolf Rubsamen * 1 Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, 2 Faculty of Biosciences, Pharmacy and Psychology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany Abstract Background: The giant synapses of Held play an important role in high-fidelity auditory processing and provide a model system for synaptic transmission at central synapses. Whether transmission of action potentials can fail at these synapses has been investigated in recent studies. At the endbulbs of Held in the anteroventral cochlear nucleus (AVCN) a consistent picture emerged, whereas at the calyx of Held in the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB) results on the reliability of transmission remain inconsistent. In vivo this discrepancy could be due to the difficulty in identifying failures of transmission. Methods/Findings: We introduce a novel method for detecting unreliable transmission in vivo. Based on the temporal relationship between a cells’ waveform and other potentials in the recordings, a statistical test is developed that provides a balanced decision between the presence and the absence of failures. Its performance is quantified using simulated voltage recordings and found to exhibit a high level of accuracy. The method was applied to extracellular recordings from the synapses of Held in vivo. At the calyces of Held failures of transmission were found only rarely. By contrast, at the endbulbs of Held in the AVCN failures were found under spontaneous, excited, and