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Neurobiology

Homeostasis or synaptic plasticity?

Nature volume 391, pages 845–846 (1998)Cite this article

Almost 50 years ago, Hebb1 proposed that during development, learning and perception, correlated activity induces long-lasting strengthening in synaptic transmission. Remarkably, however, neurobiologists inspired by Hebb's principle have sought only one side of the regulatory process — that is, synapse-specific changes in synaptic strengths. They have rarely thought about the compensatory mechanisms that regulate the total synaptic strength of a neuron (reviewed in ref. 2). But on page 892 of this issue, Turrigiano et al.3 describe stabilizing mechanisms that may represent a more general form of activity-dependent regulation of synaptic transmission. The changes in postsynaptic sensitivity that they have found might be seen as a demonstration of basic homeostasis, designed to return the integrative function of the cell to within a reference working range.

Five homeostatic processes related to synaptic integration are generally recognized. The simplest form regulates the efficacy of transmission around a mean synaptic gain or between two boundary values. When evaluated on a longer timescale, the fast, input-dependent regulation of synaptic transmission (recently described in cortical networks4,5) results in an averaged synaptic efficacy that is roughly constant in the face of rapid changes in the probability of transmitter release6. Furthermore, the probability of inducing potentiation, depression or depotentiation depends on the previous stimulation history of the network (‘metaplasticity’ in ref. 7) and on the initial state of the synapse.

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  1. the Equipe Cognisciences, Institut Alfred Fessard, CNRS, 91198, Gif sur Yvette, France

    Yves Frégnac

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  1. Yves Frégnac
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Frégnac, Y. Homeostasis or synaptic plasticity?. Nature 391, 845–846 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/35996

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