Timing, Short-term Plasticity, and Metaplasticity of STP
[Thesis]
Chen, Weixiang
Buonomano, Dean
UCLA
2013
UCLA
2013
Brain function depends on the communication between a vast number of neurons connected mostly via chemical synapses. The strength of these synapses changes over both short- and long-term time scales as a result of activity. Long-term changes in synaptic strength that last minutes, hours or more, including long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD), have been carefully studied and are considered to be one of the neuronal bases of learning and memory. Synaptic strength also changes rapidly on the time scale of tens or hundreds of milliseconds in a use-dependent manner. This form of plasticity is termed short-term synaptic plasticity (STP). In contrast to LTP there has been significantly less work on STP.