PSB 3002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Membrane Potential, Dentate Gyrus, Perforant Path
Document Summary
Consider the process of reinforcement as it acts on the instrumental conditioning task whereby a rat learns to press a lever for a food reward. The reinforcing stimulus strengthens the connection between the perceptual and motor systems. Changes in the function and structure of synapses One particular form of synaptic plasticity, long-term potentiation (ltp) has been extensively studied in the hippocampus. ---ltp: long-term increase in excitability of neuron to particular synaptic input caused by repeated high- frequency activity of that input (10 - 50 hz) ---hippocampal formation: forebrain structure of temporal lobe, constituting important part of limbic system; includes hippocampus proper, dentate gyrus, and subiculum. ----population epsp: evoked potential that represents epsps of population of neurons. Ltp can be induced at synapses between entorhinal cortex (ec) and dentate gyrus (dg) by stimulating the perforant path (pp) ---evoked potential that represents epsps of population of neurons.