Question

If only inhibitory postsynaptic potential occurs without excitatory postsynaptic potential at all, what happens to spike timing dependent plasticity?

in brain

Answer 1

Spike-timing dependent plasticity in inhibitory circuits. Inhibitory circuits in the brain rely on GABA-releasing interneurons. For long, inhibitory circuits were considered weakly plastic in the face of patterns of neuronal activity that trigger long-term changes in the synapses between excitatory principal cells.

Spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) refers to a form of associative synaptic plasticity in which the temporal order of the presynaptic and postsynaptic action potentials determines the direction of plasticity, that is, whether synaptic depression or potentiation is induced. In the most common form of STDP, long-term potentiation is induced if the presynaptic spike precedes the postsynaptic spike (pre→post), whereas long-term depression is induced if the postsynaptic spike precedes the presynaptic spike (post→pre). In addition to the order of the pre- and postsynaptic spike, STDP is sensitive to the interspike interval, the time elapsed between the two spikes. In general, short intervals produce maximal plasticity, while longer intervals produce little or no change in synaptic strength.