Homeostatic plasticity

In Neuroscience, homeostatic plasticity refers to the capacity of neurons to regulate their own excitability relative to network activity, a compensatory adjustment that occurs over the timescale of days.

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Homeostatic plasticity is thought to oppose Hebbian plasticity by modulating the activity of the synapse. Homeostatic plasticity was first discovered by Gina Turrigano, who published a paper in the journal Nature in 1998 describing a compensatory changes in miniature excitatory post-synaptic currents (mEPSCs) after chronic excitation or inhibition. The exact mechanisms underlying this mechanism are under active investigation.

The term homeostatic plasticity derives from two opposing concepts: ‘homeostatic’ (a product of the Greek words for ‘same’ and ‘state’ or ‘condition’) and plasticity (or 'change'), thus homeostatic plasticity means "staying the same through change."

References

• Turrigiano GG, Leslie KR, Desai NS, Rutherford LC and Nelson SB (1998), Activity-dependent scaling of quantal amplitude in neocortical neurons, Nature 391, 892-896

Med.

• Turrigiano GG and Nelson SB (2004), Homeostatic Plasiticity in the Developing Nervous System, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5, 97-107