Long-Term Potentiation Produces a Sustained Expansion of Synaptic Information Storage Capacity in Adult Rat Hippocampus.

Long-term potentiation (LTP) has become a standard model for investigating synaptic mechanisms of learning and memory. Increasingly, it is of interest to understand how LTP affects the synaptic information storage capacity of the targeted population of synapses. Here, structural synaptic plasticity during LTP was explored using three-dimensional reconstruction from serial section electron microscopy.

Dually innervated dendritic spines develop in the absence of excitatory activity and resist plasticity through tonic inhibitory crosstalk.

Dendritic spines can be directly connected to both inhibitory and excitatory presynaptic terminals, resulting in nanometer-scale proximity of opposing synaptic functions. While dually innervated spines (DiSs) are observed throughout the central nervous system, their developmental timeline and functional properties remain uncharacterized. Here we used a combination of serial section electron microscopy, live imaging, and local synapse activity manipulations to investigate DiS development and function in rodent hippocampus.

Dendritic Spine Density Scales with Microtubule Number in Rat Hippocampal Dendrites.

Microtubules deliver essential resources to and from synapses. Three-dimensional reconstructions in rat hippocampus reveal a sampling bias regarding spine density that needs to be controlled for dendrite caliber and resource delivery based on microtubule number. The strength of this relationship varies across dendritic arbors, as illustrated for area CA1 and dentate gyrus.

Long-term potentiation expands information content of hippocampal dentate gyrus synapses.

An approach combining signal detection theory and precise 3D reconstructions from serial section electron microscopy (3DEM) was used to investigate synaptic plasticity and information storage capacity at medial perforant path synapses in adult hippocampal dentate gyrus in vivo. Induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) markedly increased the frequencies of both small and large spines measured 30 minutes later. This bidirectional expansion resulted in heterosynaptic counterbalancing of total synaptic area per unit length of granule cell dendrite.