The dentate gyrus (DG) is thought to enable efficient hippocampal memory acquisition via pattern separation. With patterns defined as spatiotemporally distributed action potential sequences, the principal DG output neurons (granule cells, GCs), presumably sparsen and separate similar input patterns from the perforant path (PP). In electrophysiological experiments, we have demonstrated that during temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), GCs downscale their excitability by transcriptional upregulation of ‘leak’ channels. Here we studied whether this cell type-specific intrinsic plasticity is in a position to homeostatically adjust DG network function. We modified an established conductance-based computer model of the DG network such that it realizes a spatiotemporal pattern separation task, and quantified its performance with and without the experimentally constrained leaky GC phenotype. ...
Model Type: Realistic Network; Neuron or other electrically excitable cell
Region(s) or Organism(s): Dentate gyrus
Cell Type(s): Dentate gyrus granule GLU cell; Dentate gyrus mossy cell; Dentate gyrus basket cell; Dentate gyrus hilar cell; Dentate gyrus MOPP cell
Currents: I Chloride; I K,leak; I Cl, leak; Kir; Kir2 leak
Genes: IRK; Kir2.1 KCNJ2; Kir2.2 KCNJ12; Kir2.3 KCNJ4; Kir2.4 KCNJ14
Model Concept(s): Activity Patterns; Spatio-temporal Activity Patterns; Intrinsic plasticity; Pathophysiology; Epilepsy; Homeostasis; Pattern Separation
Simulation Environment: NEURON
Implementer(s): Yim, Man Yi [manyi.yim at googlemail.com]; Hanuschkin, Alexander ; Wolfart, Jakob
References:
Yim MY, Hanuschkin A, Wolfart J. (2015). Intrinsic rescaling of granule cells restores pattern separation ability of a dentate gyrus network model during epileptic hyperexcitability. Hippocampus. 25 [PubMed]