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Noisy Synaptic Conductance: Bug or a Feature?

Rusakov, DA; Savtchenko, LP; Latham, PE; (2020) Noisy Synaptic Conductance: Bug or a Feature? Trends in Neurosciences , 43 (6) pp. 363-372. 10.1016/j.tins.2020.03.009. Green open access

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Abstract

More often than not, action potentials fail to trigger neurotransmitter release. And even when neurotransmitter is released, the resulting change in synaptic conductance is highly variable. Given the energetic cost of generating and propagating action potentials, and the importance of information transmission across synapses, this seems both wasteful and inefficient. However, synaptic noise arising from variable transmission can improve, in certain restricted conditions, information transmission. Under broader conditions, it can improve information transmission per release, a quantity that is relevant given the energetic constraints on computing in the brain. Here we discuss the role, both positive and negative, synaptic noise plays in information transmission and computation in the brain.

Type: Article
Title: Noisy Synaptic Conductance: Bug or a Feature?
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.tins.2020.03.009
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2020.03.009
Language: English
Additional information: © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: synaptic noise, information transfer, optimal synapse
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Gatsby Computational Neurosci Unit
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10096380
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