Dynamic synapse: Harnessing the computing power of synaptic dynamics

A major unresolved issues in neuroscience is the emergence of functional ca pability from underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms. The concept of a dynamic synapse is extended to provide a formalism to incorporate synapti c mechanisms into a general scheme of neural information processing: A syna pse is composed of two distinct functional units, presynaptic terminals for transforming the sequence of action potentials into multiple sequences of discrete release events, and postsynaptic components for combining such syn aptic signals. The complex interaction of various cellular and molecular pr ocesses in synapses can be concisely expressed and interpreted in these two synaptic terms. Learning involves modifying the synaptic dynamics such tha t each axon terminal performs proper transformation function. (C) 1999 Else vier Science B.V. All rights reserved.