A novel mechanism for switching a neural system from one state to another

An animal's ability to rapidly adjust to new conditions is essential to its survival. The nervous system, then, must be built with the flexibility to adjust, or shift, its processing capabilities on the fly. To understand how this flexibility comes about, we tracked a well-known behavioral shif...

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Published inFrontiers in computational neuroscience Vol. 4; p. 2
Main Authors Pandarinath, Chethan, Bomash, Illya, Victor, Jonathan D, Prusky, Glen T, Tschetter, Wayne W, Nirenberg, Sheila
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 2010
Frontiers Media S.A
Subjects
adaptation
Attention
Behavior
cable theory
gap junction
horizontal cell
Hypotheses
Light
Nervous system
network shift
Neuroscience
Noise
Retina
New York
United States > US
shunt
network shift
state change
cable theory
adaptation
attention
gap junction
horizontal cell
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Summary:An animal's ability to rapidly adjust to new conditions is essential to its survival. The nervous system, then, must be built with the flexibility to adjust, or shift, its processing capabilities on the fly. To understand how this flexibility comes about, we tracked a well-known behavioral shift, a visual integration shift, down to its underlying circuitry, and found that it is produced by a novel mechanism - a change in gap junction coupling that can turn a cell class on and off. The results showed that the turning on and off of a cell class shifted the circuit's behavior from one state to another, and, likewise, the animal's behavior. The widespread presence of similar gap junction-coupled networks in the brain suggests that this mechanism may underlie other behavioral shifts as well.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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Edited by: Matthias Bethge, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany
Reviewed by: Thomas Euler, University of Tübingen, Germany; Fred Rieke, University of Washington, USA; Guenther Zeck, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Germany
ISSN:1662-5188
1662-5188
DOI:10.3389/fncom.2010.00002