Open AccessModeling the role of gap junctions between excitatory neurons in the developing visual cortex
Author(s) -
Jennifer Crodelle,
David W. McLaughlin
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos computational biology/plos computational biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.628
H-Index - 182
eISSN - 1553-7358
pISSN - 1553-734X
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007915
Subject(s) - neuroscience , gap junction , excitatory postsynaptic potential , visual cortex , electrical synapses , synapse , coupling (piping) , biology , feed forward , synaptic plasticity , cortex (anatomy) , materials science , microbiology and biotechnology , inhibitory postsynaptic potential , biochemistry , receptor , control engineering , metallurgy , engineering , intracellular
Recent experiments in the developing mammalian visual cortex have revealed that gap junctions couple excitatory cells and potentially influence the formation of chemical synapses. In particular, cells that were coupled by a gap junction during development tend to share an orientation preference and are preferentially coupled by a chemical synapse in the adult cortex, a property that is diminished when gap junctions are blocked. In this work, we construct a simplified model of the developing mouse visual cortex including spike-timing-dependent plasticity of both the feedforward synaptic inputs and recurrent cortical synapses. We use this model to show that synchrony among gap-junction-coupled cells underlies their preference to form strong recurrent synapses and develop similar orientation preference; this effect decreases with an increase in coupling density. Additionally, we demonstrate that gap-junction coupling works, together with the relative timing of synaptic development of the feedforward and recurrent synapses, to determine the resulting cortical map of orientation preference.