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Nanoconnectomic upper bound on the variability of synaptic plasticity.

Thomas M Bartol | Cailey Bromer | Justin Kinney | Michael A Chirillo | Jennifer N Bourne | Kristen M Harris | Terrence J Sejnowski
eLife | 2015

Information in a computer is quantified by the number of bits that can be stored and recovered. An important question about the brain is how much information can be stored at a synapse through synaptic plasticity, which depends on the history of probabilistic synaptic activity. The strong correlation between size and efficacy of a synapse allowed us to estimate the variability of synaptic plasticity. In an EM reconstruction of hippocampal neuropil we found single axons making two or more synaptic contacts onto the same dendrites, having shared histories of presynaptic and postsynaptic activity. The spine heads and neck diameters, but not neck lengths, of these pairs were nearly identical in size. We found that there is a minimum of 26 distinguishable synaptic strengths, corresponding to storing 4.7 bits of information at each synapse. Because of stochastic variability of synaptic activation the observed precision requires averaging activity over several minutes.

Pubmed ID: 26618907

Research resources used in this publication

None found

Antibodies used in this publication

None found

Associated grants

  • Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: NS074644
  • Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: NS44306
  • Agency: NIMH NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 MH079076
  • Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 NS074644
  • Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: NS21184
  • Agency: NIMH NIH HHS, United States
    Id: MH079076
  • Agency: NIMH NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 MH104319
  • Agency: NIMH NIH HHS, United States
    Id: MH095980
  • Agency: NIGMS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: GM103712
  • Agency: NIGMS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: P41 GM103712
  • Agency: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, United States
  • Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 NS021184
  • Agency: NIMH NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 MH095980
  • Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: P01 NS044306
  • Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R37 NS021184

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