The influence of stuttering properties for firing activity in pairs of electrically coupled striatal fast-spiking interneurons

• The striatum is the main input stage of the basal ganglia system, which is involved in executive functions of the forebrain – such as the planning and the selection of motor behavior. Feedforward inhibition of medium-sized spiny projection neurons in the striatum by fast-spiking interneurons is supposed to be an important determinant of controlling striatal output to later stages of the basal ganglia [1]. Striatal fast-spiking interneurons, which constitute approximately 1-2 % of all striatal neurons, show many similarities to cortical fast-spiking cells. In response to somatic current injection, for example, some of these neurons exhibit spike bursts with a variable number of action potentials (so called stuttering) [2-4]. Interestingly, the membrane potential between such stuttering episodes oscillates in the range of 20-100 Hz [3,5]. The first spike of each stuttering episode invariably occurs at a peak of the underlying subthreshold oscillation. In both cortex and striatum, fast-spiking cells have been shown to be inter-connected by gap junctions [6,7]. In vitro measurements as well as theoretical studies indicate that electrical coupling via gap junctions might be able to promote synchronous activity among these neurons [6,8].Here we use computational modeling to investigate how the presence of subthreshold oscillations and stuttering properties influence the synchronization of activity in pairs of electrically coupled fast-spiking neurons. We use the model of Golomb et al. [3], which we have extended with a dendritic tree in order to be able to simulate distal synaptic input. We show that gap junctions are able to synchronize both subthreshold membrane potential fluctuations as well as the stuttering periods in response to somatic current injection. In response to synaptic input, however, our model neuron rarely shows subthreshold oscillations, and the stuttering behavior changes to a firing pattern with single spikes or spike doublets. We furthermore investigate the effect of GABAergic (i.e. inhibitory) input to the model of the fast-spiking neuron and predict that inhibitory input is able to induce overlapping stuttering episodes in these cells. We finally discuss our results in the context of the feedforward inhibitory network which is likely to play an important role in striatal and basal ganglia function.

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NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

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Computer science

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