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Updated: May 29, 2025

Real-time Electrophysiology: Using Closed-loop Protocols to Probe Neuronal Dynamics and Beyond
Published on: June 24, 2015
Dendritic excitations govern back-propagation via a spike-rate accelerometer
Pojeong Park1,2, J David Wong-Campos1, Daniel G Itkis1
1Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Abstract:
Dendrites on neurons support electrical excitations, but the computational significance of these events is not well understood. We developed molecular, optical, and computational tools for all-optical electrophysiology in dendrites. We mapped sub-millisecond voltage dynamics throughout the dendritic trees of CA1 pyramidal neurons under diverse optogenetic and synaptic stimulus patterns, in acute brain slices. Our data show history-dependent spike back-propagation in distal dendrites, driven by locally generated Na+ spikes (dSpikes). Dendritic depolarization created a transient window for dSpike propagation, opened by A-type KV channel inactivation, and closed by slow NaV inactivation. Collisions of dSpikes with synaptic inputs triggered calcium channel and N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR)-dependent dendritic plateau potentials and accompanying complex spikes at the soma. This hierarchical ion channel network acts as a spike-rate accelerometer, providing an intuitive picture connecting dendritic biophysics to associative plasticity rules.
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