Electrical properties of dendritic spines with bulbous end terminals

Abstract

Several suggestions have been made about the functional significance of dendritic spines in connection with synaptic plasticity. We investigated transient electrical behavior of spines with bulbous terminals in neurons with arbitrary dendritic geometries. It is shown that postsynaptic potential transform caused by a synapse on a spine can be resolved into a product of two transfer functions and the synaptic input current transform. The first transfer function was determined to be independent of the spine. The second transfer function represents the straightforward attenuation effect of the spine, which determines the effective synaptic current reaching the parent dendrite. Using what is known of the size and the shape of spines from histology, we conclude that almost all of the synaptic current flow into the parent dendrite, and that therefore the straightforward attenuation effect is negligible. Consequently, when the synaptic current remained unaltered, as was the case for a large synaptic resistance as compared with the spine stem resistance, a morphological change of the spine did not produce an effective change in the postsynaptic potential. On the other hand, when the synaptic resistance is compared with the spine stem impedance, the morphological change of the spine might induce changes of the synaptic current and the postsynaptic potential.