A dendritic substrate for temporal diversity of cortical inhibition.

In the mammalian neocortex, GABAergic interneurons (INs) inhibit cortical networks in profoundly different ways. The extent to which this depends on how different INs process excitatory signals along their dendrites is poorly understood. Here, we reveal that the functional specialization of two major populations of cortical INs is determined by the unique association of different dendritic integration modes with distinct synaptic organization motifs.

Developmental emergence of two-stage nonlinear synaptic integration in cerebellar interneurons.

Synaptic transmission, connectivity, and dendritic morphology mature in parallel during brain development and are often disrupted in neurodevelopmental disorders. Yet how these changes influence the neuronal computations necessary for normal brain function are not well understood. To identify cellular mechanisms underlying the maturation of synaptic integration in interneurons, we combined patch-clamp recordings of excitatory inputs in mouse cerebellar stellate cells (SCs), three-dimensional reconstruction of SC morphology with excitatory synapse location, and biophysical modeling.

Differential Dendritic Integration of Synaptic Potentials and Calcium in Cerebellar Interneurons.

Dendritic voltage integration determines the transformation of synaptic inputs into output firing, while synaptic calcium integration drives plasticity mechanisms thought to underlie memory storage. Dendritic calcium integration has been shown to follow the same synaptic input-output relationship as dendritic voltage, but whether similar operations apply to neurons exhibiting sublinear voltage integration is unknown. We examined the properties and cellular mechanisms of these dendritic operations in cerebellar molecular layer interneurons using dendritic voltage and calcium imaging, in combination with synaptic stimulation or glutamate uncaging.

Contribution of sublinear and supralinear dendritic integration to neuronal computations.

Nonlinear dendritic integration is thought to increase the computational ability of neurons. Most studies focus on how supralinear summation of excitatory synaptic responses arising from clustered inputs within single dendrites result in the enhancement of neuronal firing, enabling simple computations such as feature detection. Recent reports have shown that sublinear summation is also a prominent dendritic operation, extending the range of subthreshold input-output (sI/O) transformations conferred by dendrites.