History-dependent excitability as a single-cell substrate of transient memory for information discrimination.

ABSTRACT: Neurons react differently to incoming stimuli depending upon their previous history of stimulation. This property can be considered as a single-cell substrate for transient memory, or context-dependent information processing: depending upon the current context that the neuron "sees" through the subset of the network impinging on it in the immediate past, the same synaptic event can evoke a postsynaptic spike or just a subthreshold depolarization. We propose a formal definition of History-Dependent Excitability (HDE) as a measure of the propensity to firing in any moment in time, linking the subthreshold history-dependent dynamics with spike generation. This definition allows the quantitative assessment of the intrinsic memory for different single-neuron dynamics and input statistics. We il

SUBMITTER: Baroni F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3010997 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature