title: A Phenomenological Synapse Model for Asynchronous Neurotransmitter Release.
abstract: Neurons communicate with each other via synapses. Action potentials cause release of neurotransmitters at the axon terminal. Typically, this neurotransmitter release is tightly time-locked to the arrival of an action potential and is thus called synchronous release. However, neurotransmitter release is stochastic and the rate of release of small quanta of neurotransmitters can be considerably elevated even long after the ceasing of spiking activity, leading to asynchronous release of neurotransmitters. Such asynchronous release varies for tissue and neuron types and has been shown recently to be pronounced in fast-spiking neurons. Notably, it was found that asynchronous release is enhanced in human epileptic tissue implicating a possibly important role in generating abnormal neural activity. Current neural network models for simulating and studying neural activity virtually only consider synchronous release and ignore asynchronous transmitter release. Here, we develop a phenomenological model for asynchronous neurotransmitter release, which, on one hand, captures the fundamental features of the asynchronous release process, and, on the other hand, is simple enough to be incorporated in large-size network simulations. Our proposed model is based on the well-known equations for short-term dynamical synaptic interactions and includes an additional stochastic term for modeling asynchronous release. We use experimental data obtained from inhibitory fast-spiking synapses of human epileptic tissue to fit the model parameters, and demonstrate that our model reproduces the characteristics of realistic asynchronous transmitter release.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Luping
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xiaolong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yousheng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Malte J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Rasch
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Si
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wu
keywords: Ca2+ concentration; asynchronous release; neurotransmitter; short-term plasticity; stochasticity; synaptic model; synchronous release
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