CANCELLED: Self-Tuning Neurons and Firing Rate Homeostasis
CANCELLED
Homeostatic mechanisms stabilize neural circuit function by keeping firing rates (FRs) within a set-point range, but whether individual neocortical neurons regulate firing cell-autonomously, and whether this process is restricted to certain behavioral states such as sleep or wake, is unknown. We have followed the process of FR homeostasis in individual visual cortical neurons in freely behaving rodents as they cycled between sleep and wake states. When FRs are perturbed by visual deprivation, over time they return precisely to a cell-autonomous set-point, and this restoration of firing occurs selectively during periods of active waking and is suppressed by sleep. Longer natural waking periods result in more FR homeostasis, as does artificially extending the length of waking. This exclusion of FR homeostasis from sleep raises the possibility that memory consolidation or some other sleep-dependent process is vulnerable to interference from homeostatic plasticity mechanisms.
Date: 22 April 2016, 12:00 (Friday, 0th week, Trinity 2016)
Venue: Venue to be announced
Speaker: Gina Turrigiano (Department of Biology, Volen Centre for Complex Systems, Brandeis University)
Organising department: Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (DPAG)
Organiser: Fiona Woods (University of Oxford, Department of Physiology Anatomy and Genetics, Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour)
Organiser contact email address: fiona.woods@cncb.ox.ac.uk
Part of: CNCB Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editors: Anne Bowtell, Fiona Woods