Home > News & Events > Publications > Journal of Integrative Neuroscience: Modeling Glutamatergic Synapses: Insights into mechanisms regulating synaptic efficacy
Journal of Integrative Neuroscience: Modeling Glutamatergic Synapses: Insights into mechanisms regulating synaptic efficacy
Jean-Marie C. Bouteiller, Michel Baudry, Sushimita L. Allam, Renaud J. Greget, Serge Bischoff and Theodore W. Berger
BME Department, University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
and
Rhenovia Pharma, Mulhouse, France
Received 15 April 2008
Accepted 25 April 2008
This paper is dedicated to Gilbert Chauvet. Gilbert was a friend, a collaborator,
and an inspiration for much of this effort. He is being dearly missed and we
hope that this article will contribute to maintain the fire that he ignited.
The hippocampal formation is critically involved for the long-term storage of various forms
of information, and it is widely believed that the phenomenon of long-term potentiation
(LTP) of synaptic transmission is a molecular/cellular mechanism participating in memory
formation. Although several high level models of hippocampal function have been developed,
they do not incorporate detailed molecular information of the type necessary to
understand the contribution of individual molecular events to the mechanisms underlying
LTP and learning and memory. We are therefore developing new technological tools based
on mathematical modeling and computer simulation of the molecular processes taking
place in realistic biological networks to reach such an understanding. This article briefly
summarizes the approach we are using and illustrates it by presenting data regarding the
effects of changing the number of AMPA receptors on various features of glutamatergic
transmission, including NMDA receptor-mediated responses and paired-pulse facilitation.
We conclude by discussing the significance of these results and providing some ideas for
future directions with this approach.
