Eavesdropping on Synaptic Traffic

Steve Cox
Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rice University

Abstract: Nerve cells communicate to one another across synapses. The receiver encodes this message as a change in local, in space and time, conductance. This change engenders a postsynaptic change in potential that actively diffuses through the dendritic tree and eventually may lead to the firing of a nervous impulse which may in turn lead to a long term change in the aforementioned synaptic conductance. To quantify this synaptic plasticity we propose a non invasive cocktail of optical imaging via voltage sensitive dyes and numerical determination of synapse location and conductance time course. In this talk we will focus on the mathematical and numerical study of the sideways Hodgkin-Huxley system that permits one to eavesdrop on synapses.