Short Term Plasticity Provides Temporal Filtering at Chemical Synapses

Abstract

Chemical synapses exhibit a wide range of mechanisms that modulate the postsynaptic response due to presynaptic action potentials (APs) as a function of the arrival pattern of the presynaptic APs. Here we demonstrate that combinations of depression, facilitation and frequency-dependent recovery will give synapses that are either sensitive to the steady-state input signal, or to the onsets and offsets of signal transients. In addition, a synapse may be tuned to preferentially respond to low frequency modulation of an input signal. Show more