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- Title
Homeostatic synaptic plasticity rescues neural coding reliability.
- Authors
Rozenfeld, Eyal; Ehmann, Nadine; Manoim, Julia E.; Kittel, Robert J.; Parnas, Moshe
- Abstract
To survive, animals must recognize reoccurring stimuli. This necessitates a reliable stimulus representation by the neural code. While synaptic transmission underlies the propagation of neural codes, it is unclear how synaptic plasticity can maintain coding reliability. By studying the olfactory system of Drosophila melanogaster, we aimed to obtain a deeper mechanistic understanding of how synaptic function shapes neural coding in the live, behaving animal. We show that the properties of the active zone (AZ), the presynaptic site of neurotransmitter release, are critical for generating a reliable neural code. Reducing neurotransmitter release probability of olfactory sensory neurons disrupts both neural coding and behavioral reliability. Strikingly, a target-specific homeostatic increase of AZ numbers rescues these defects within a day. These findings demonstrate an important role for synaptic plasticity in maintaining neural coding reliability and are of pathophysiological interest by uncovering an elegant mechanism through which the neural circuitry can counterbalance perturbations. How synaptic plasticity affects neural coding reliability is not well understood. Here, the authors find that reducing neurotransmitter release probability triggers a homeostatic compensation to maintain neural coding and behavioral reliability.
- Subjects
NEUROPLASTICITY; NEURAL codes; NEURAL circuitry; DROSOPHILA melanogaster; SENSORY neurons; PRESYNAPTIC receptors; NEURAL transmission
- Publication
Nature Communications, 2023, Vol 14, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
2041-1723
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s41467-023-38575-6