Roman Dvorkin

Relative contributions of specific activity histories vs. spontaneous processes to synaptic remodeling

Changes in synaptic properties are widely believed to be governed by the specific activity histories experienced by synapses. However, synapses also exhibit significant changes which occur in the absence of particular activation patterns or, for that matter, any activity at all. This project, based on long-term imaging of individual synapses and chronic recordings of network activity, seeks to compare the relative contributions of specific activity histories to those of other processes to changes synapses undergo over times scales of many hours and days.