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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 586/6/1495    most recent jphysiol.2007.148635v1 Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Pelkey, K. A. Articles by McBain, C. J. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Pelkey, K. A. Articles by McBain, C. J. Related Collections Review articles Neuroscience

¹ National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA

Individual axons of central neurons innervate a large number of distinct postsynaptic targets belonging to divergent functional categories such as glutamatergic principal cells and inhibitory interneurons. While each bouton along a common axon should experience the same activity pattern in response to action potential firing within the parent presynaptic neuron, accumulating evidence suggests that neighbouring boutons contacting functionally distinct postsynaptic targets regulate their release properties independently, despite being separated by only a few microns. This target-cell-specific autonomy of presynaptic function can greatly expand the computational prowess of central axons to allow for precise coordination of large neuronal ensembles within a given circuit. An excellent example of target-cell-specific presynaptic mechanisms occurs in the CA3 hippocampus where mossy fibre (MF) axons of dentate gyrus granule cells target both principal cells and local circuit inhibitory interneurons via both anatomically and functionally specialized terminals. Of particular interest, mechanisms of both short- and long-term plasticity remain autonomous at these divergent release sites due to an anatomical and biochemical segregation of discrete molecular signalling cascades. Here we review roughly a decades worth of research on the MF–CA3 pathway to showcase the target-cell dependence of presynaptically expressed NMDA receptor-independent synaptic plasticity.

(Received 21 November 2007; accepted after revision 3 December 2007; first published online 13 December 2007)
Corresponding author K. A. Pelkey: Laboratory on Cellular and Synaptic Neurophysiology, Building 35, Rm 3C705, NICHD-LCSN, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. Email: pelkeyk2{at}mail.nih.gov

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				C. J. McBain New directions in synaptic and network plasticity - a move away from NMDA receptor mediated plasticity J. Physiol., March 15, 2008; 586(6): 1473 - 1474. [Full Text] [PDF]