Developing networks play a similar melody

During development, when synapses start to be established, a primitive form of network-driven activity provides most of the synaptic activity. This pa ttern enables a high degree of synchrony in immature neurons in spite of th e small number of functional synapses and could participate in activity-dep endent growth and synapse formation. Relying on the giant depolarizing pote ntials that provide most of the synaptic activity in the developing hippoca mpus, this article reviews the common properties and generating mechanisms of these patterns, and particularly the role of the early depolarizing acti on of GABA, and glycine receptors and the sequential expression of GABA and glutamate synapses. Patterns similar to giant depolarizing potentials have been observed in a wide range of structures and species suggesting that th ere is a temporal template throughout evolution that constitutes an essenti al step in the formation of functional networks.