The amplitude distribution of miniature postsynaptic currents (minis) in many central neurons has a large variance and positive skew, but the sources of this variance and skew are unresolved. Recently it has been proposed that spontaneous Ca2+ influx into a presynaptic bouton with multiple release sites could cause spontaneous multiquantal minis by synchronizing release at all sites in the bout...

In this issue of Neuron, Sara et al. find that spontaneously released miniature synaptic potentials arise from a pool of vesicles distinct from those released by neural activity. This modification of a basic tenet of the quantal hypothesis has important implications for the analysis of changes in synaptic transmission.

State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chem Innovation Center of Chemistry for Life Scie Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 21 cn; [email protected] Key Laboratory of Nuclear Medicine, Minis Molecular Nuclear Medicine, Jiangsu Instit 214063, China † Electronic supplementary information (E qRT-PCR assay, western blot assay, feas assay, and specic measurement of RISC. Cite this: Chem. Sci., 2017...

Maintenance of a low intraneuronal Cl- concentration, [Cl-]i, is critical for inhibition in the CNS. Here, the contribution of passive, conductive Cl- flux to recovery of [Cl-]i after a high load was analyzed in mature central neurons from rat. A novel method for quantifying the resting Cl- conductance, important for [Cl-]i recovery, was developed and the possible contribution of GABAA and glyc...

Evoked and spontaneous neurotransmitter release mechanisms share similar components. Synaptotagmin-1 (Syt-1) plays a central role in evoked neurotransmitter release as a Ca sensor. Syt-1 has also been implicated in the regulation of spontaneous release. A recent study perfomed on central synapses confirms the role of Syt-1 in spontaneous release, as a Ca sensor, a fusion clamp and an inhibitor ...

The N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptor (NMDAR), long implicated in developmental plasticity, shows decay time kinetics that shorten postnatally as NR2A subunits are added to the receptor. Neither the mechanism nor immediate effect of this change is known. We studied developing NMDAR currents by using visual neurons in slices from NR2A knockout (NR2AKO) and WT mice. Both strains show...

We show by a counterexample that the dual-ascent procedure proposed by Herrmann, Ioannou, Minis and Proth in a 1996 issue of the European Journal of Operational Research is incorrect in the sense that it does not generate a valid lower bound to the optimal value of xed-charge capacitated network design problems. We provide a correct dual-ascent procedure based on the same ideas and we give an i...