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. 2005 May;17(5):991-995.
doi: 10.1162/0899766053491841.

Gain control by concerted changes in I(A) and I(H) conductances

Denis Burdakov  1
Affiliations

Gain control by concerted changes in I(A) and I(H) conductances

Denis Burdakov. Neural Comput. 2005 May.

Abstract

Stability of intrinsic electrical activity and modulation of input-output gain are both important for neuronal information processing. It is therefore of interest to define biologically plausible parameters that allow these two features to coexist. Recent experiments indicate that in some biological neurons, the stability of spontaneous firing can arise from coregulated expression of the electrophysiologically opposing I(A) and I(H) currents. Here, I show that such balanced changes in I(A) and I(H) dramatically alter the slope of the relationship between the firing rate and driving current in a Hodgkin-Huxley-type model neuron. Concerted changes in I(A) and I(H) can thus control neuronal gain while preserving intrinsic activity.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A, B) Examples of simulations illustrating that concerted changes in IA and IH affect neuronal gain without changes in unstimulated firing rate or pattern. (A) Neuron with a small IA and IH (gA and gH are 10 and 0.05 mS/cm2, respectively) responds to a tonic excitatory current with a large increase in firing rate. (B) Increasing IA and IH in a balanced manner that leaves unstimulated firing unaltered (here, gA and gH are 50 and 1 mS/cm2, respectively) leads to a marked reduction of the firing response to the same excitatory current. Simulation protocols used to elicit IA, IH, and firing responses in A and B are shown schematically below the corresponding traces. (C) The relationship between gA and gH that satisfies the condition of unaltered intrinsic firing characteristics. (D) Examples of f-I relationships of neurons with different balanced combinations of gA and gH (respectively, in mS/cm2: black circles = 10 and 0.05, white squares = 20 and 0.18, black triangles = 50 and 1, white diamonds = 100 and 6). (E) Gain values (the slopes of f-I relationships such as those shown in D) plotted against the sum of gA and gH for combinations of gA and gH that do not alter intrinsic firing characteristics.
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