期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2010
卷号:107
期号:36
页码:15975-15980
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1004562107
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Spike timing-dependent long-term potentiation (t-LTP) is the embodiment of Donald Hebb's postulated rule for associative memory formation. Pre- and postsynaptic action potentials need to be precisely correlated in time to induce this form of synaptic plasticity. NMDA receptors have been proposed to detect correlated activity and to trigger synaptic plasticity. However, the slow kinetic of NMDA receptor currents is at odds with the millisecond precision of coincidence detection. Here we show that AMPA receptors are responsible for the extremely narrow time window for t-LTP induction. Furthermore, we visualized synergistic interactions between AMPA and NMDA receptors and back-propagating action potentials on the level of individual spines. Supralinear calcium signals were observed for spike timings that induced t-LTP and were most pronounced in spines well isolated from the dendrite. We conclude that AMPA receptors gate the induction of associative synaptic plasticity by regulating the temporal precision of coincidence detection.