Sentences with phrase «synaptic strength»

The possibility that membrane fusion events in the postsynaptic cell may be required for the change in synaptic strength resulting from long - term potentiation (LTP) was examined.

This action can result in the activation of genes that had been switched off, and could be the cause of the recovery of synaptic strength.

Researchers have observed AMPA traveling from the inside of a neuron to the downstream end of a synapse, but they remain uncertain as to whether the migration into and out of the synapse is the major component in determining synaptic strength.

This conclusion is provocative because the dogma has been that a memory is instead stored by synaptic strength,» says Susumu Tonegawa, the Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, the director of the RIKEN - MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and the study's senior author.

Much of the current work in the lab is focused on how activity controls this receptor trafficking and how the increase in synaptic strength during LTP is stabilized and maintained.

Approaches such as electrophysiology to assess synaptic strength and plasticity, immunohistochemistry to assess synapse number, and behavioral assays to assess learning

Repeated applications of serotonin, a facilitating transmitter important in behavioral dishabituation and sensitization, produced growth of the sensory neurons that paralleled the long - term enhancement of synaptic strength.

These properties, which are believed to be important for the induction of long - term changes in synaptic strength, are imparted by asparagine residues in a putative channel - forming segment of the protein, transmembrane 2 (TM2).

So, rather than the number of AMPA receptors themselves, the abundance of scaffolding proteins appears to determine synaptic strength, effectively allowing AMPA receptors to receive signals from glutamate.

His lab is building detailed computer models of synapses and the networks they sustain in order to determine how they collect firing statistics during wakefulness and sleep and when they change synaptic strengths to reflect the difference.

Learning and memory are widely believed to result from changes in synaptic strength.

Since morphology changes of synapses underlie synaptic plasticity and our learning and memory, this will provide us with many new insights into mechanisms of how neurons store information in their morphology, how it changes synaptic strength and ultimately how it creates new memory.

With the combined use of genetics and pharmacology, the investigators altered the production of proteins controlled by eIF2α in adult mice, essentially converting them into adolescents by making them more susceptible to cocaine - induced changes in synaptic strength and behavior.

Changes in synaptic strength and in spine properties have long been associated with learning and memory, according to Alcino Silva, director of the Integrative Center for Learning and Memory at the University of California at Los Angeles.

«We were able to demonstrate for the first time that these specific cells — a small group of cells in the hippocampus — had undergone this augmentation of synaptic strength,» Tonegawa says.

We use a number of experimental approaches to gain a greater understanding of translational control mechanisms necessary for maintaining long - lasting changes in synaptic strength and memory.

The researchers» next step is to study the channel and transporter - like properties of VGLUT1 and its related isoform in greater detail, to see if they contributes to changes in synaptic strength that underlie learning, memory and many other aspects of cognition.

At the same time, she found that circuits can generate similar neuronal and network outputs from many different configurations of intrinsic neuronal excitability and synaptic strength.

«It's all fitting with the overriding idea that changes in synaptic strength are part of the way these drugs motivate behavior in a persistent way,» McGehee said.