Modeling maintenance of long-term potentiation in clustered synapses: long-term memory without bistability.

ABSTRACT: Memories are stored, at least partly, as patterns of strong synapses. Given molecular turnover, how can synapses maintain strong for the years that memories can persist? Some models postulate that biochemical bistability maintains strong synapses. However, bistability should give a bimodal distribution of synaptic strength or weight, whereas current data show unimodal distributions for weights and for a correlated variable, dendritic spine volume. Thus it is important for models to simulate both unimodal distributions and long-term memory persistence. Here a model is developed that connects ongoing, competing processes of synaptic growth and weakening to stochastic processes of receptor insertion and removal in dendritic spines. The model simulates long-term (>1 yr) persistence of groups o

SUBMITTER: Smolen P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4402204 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature