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Original Research ARTICLE

Calcium, synaptic plasticity and intrinsic homeostasis in Purkinje neuron models

Pablo Achard^1,2 and Erik De Schutter^1,3*

Theoretical Neurobiology, University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium

Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA

Computational Neuroscience Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Okinawa, Japan

We recently reproduced the complex electrical activity of a Purkinje cell (PC) with very different combinations of ionic channel maximum conductances, suggesting that a large parameter space is available to homeostatic mechanisms. It has been hypothesized that cytoplasmic calcium concentrations control the homeostatic activity sensors. This raises many questions for PCs since in these neurons calcium plays an important role in the induction of synaptic plasticity. To address this question, we generated 148 new PC models. In these models the somatic membrane voltages are stable, but the somatic calcium dynamics are very variable, in agreement with experimental results. Conversely, the calcium signal in spiny dendrites shows only small variability. We demonstrate that this localized control of calcium conductances preserves the induction of long-term depression for all models. We conclude that calcium is unlikely to be the sole activity-sensor in this cell but that there is a strong relationship between activity homeostasis and synaptic plasticity.

Keywords:

activity homeostasis, calcium signaling, Purkinje cell, synaptic plasticity, computational modeling, channel distribution

Citation:

Achard P and De Schutter E (2008). Calcium, synaptic plasticity and intrinsic homeostasis in Purkinje neuron models. Front. Comput. Neurosci. 2:8. doi: 10.3389/neuro.10.008.2008

Received:

14 July 2008;

Paper pending published:

03 October 2008;

Accepted:

08 December 2008;

Published online:

19 December 2008.

Edited by:

Nicolas Brunel, CNRS, France

Reviewed by:

Astrid A. Prinz, Emory University, USA
Arnd Roth, University College London, UK

© 2008 Achard and De Schutter. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.

*Correspondence:

Erik De Schutter, Computational Neuroscience Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, 7542 Onna, Onna-Son, Okinawa 904-0411, Japan. e-mail: erik@oist.jp