PHGY 209 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Excitatory Synapse, Ligand-Gated Ion Channel, Neurotransmitter Receptor
13 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
Imagine you stick a probe to the postsynaptic spine so you can measure its potential at each epsp. At the same time, you stimulate the pre-synaptic axon making it fire several action potentials. If you leave the synapse untouched for hours, when you come back to try 1 single action potential, the epsp will be stronger. The ca++ coming from nmda receptors cause biochemical events that fabricate new ampa receptors, which is the reason for the stronger epsp. Ltp accounts for memories that last for hours or days. For long term memories, there are some more stable changes that require ltp as a starting point. Glutamate effects on other regions of the neuron. However, in high concentrations, it is toxic for the neurons. The brain releases glu at a very specific place (synapse) Bad distribution of glu in the ecf could kills neurons. High concentrations of glutamate depolarizes the neuron too much.
