Short-Term Synaptic Plasticity Makes Neurons Sensitive to the Distribution of Presynaptic Population Firing Rates

eNeuro. 2021 Apr 8;8(2):ENEURO.0297-20.2021. doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0297-20.2021. Print 2021 Mar-Apr.

Abstract

The ability to discriminate spikes that encode a particular stimulus from spikes produced by background activity is essential for reliable information processing in the brain. We describe how synaptic short-term plasticity (STP) modulates the output of presynaptic populations as a function of the distribution of the spiking activity and find a strong relationship between STP features and sparseness of the population code, which could solve this problem. Furthermore, we show that feedforward excitation followed by inhibition (FF-EI), combined with target-dependent STP, promote substantial increase in the signal gain even for considerable deviations from the optimal conditions, granting robustness to this mechanism. A simulated neuron driven by a spiking FF-EI network is reliably modulated as predicted by a rate analysis and inherits the ability to differentiate sparse signals from dense background activity changes of the same magnitude, even at very low signal-to-noise conditions. We propose that the STP-based distribution discrimination is likely a latent function in several regions such as the cerebellum and the hippocampus.

Keywords: excitation/inhibition balance; neural code; short-term plasticity; sparse code; synaptic depression; synaptic facilitation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Action Potentials
  • Brain
  • Cerebellum
  • Hippocampus
  • Neuronal Plasticity*
  • Neurons*
  • Synapses
  • Synaptic Transmission