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Self-tuning neurons and firing rate homeostasis

turrigiano headshot
Tuesday, December 01, 2020
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Gina Turrigiano, hosted by Divya Subramanian
Neurobiology Invited Seminar Series

Duke Neurobiology welcomes neuroscientist Gina Turrigiano, Professor of Biology at Brandeis University. Contact d.shipman@duke.edu for connection details.
Partial abstract: Neocortical networks must generate and maintain stable activity patterns despite perturbations induced by learning and experience- dependent plasticity, and this stability must be maintained across distinct behavioral states with very different sensory drive and modulatory tone. There is abundant theoretical and experimental evidence that network stability is achieved through homeostatic plasticity mechanisms that adjust synaptic and neuronal properties to stabilize some measure of average activity, and this process has been extensively studied in primary visual cortex (V1), where chronic visual deprivation induces an initial drop in activity and ensemble average firing rates (FRs), but over time activity is restored to baseline despite continued deprivation. Here I discuss recent work from the lab in which we follow bidirectional FR homeostasis in individual V1 neurons in freely behaving animals, as they cycle between natural periods of sleep and wake.