Kurzfassung

Learning and memory have been traditionally associated to the
plasticity of glutamatergic synapses. Recent experimental evidence
indicates that GABAergic synaptic strength can also be modified in an
experience-dependent manner. Yet, the specific role of inhibitory
plasticity in the formation of memories is not well understood. A recent
theoretical analysis suggests that the formation and long-term storage
of memories require a tight co-orchestration of excitatory and
inhibitory plasticity in a...Learning and memory have been traditionally associated to the
plasticity of glutamatergic synapses. Recent experimental evidence
indicates that GABAergic synaptic strength can also be modified in an
experience-dependent manner. Yet, the specific role of inhibitory
plasticity in the formation of memories is not well understood. A recent
theoretical analysis suggests that the formation and long-term storage
of memories require a tight co-orchestration of excitatory and
inhibitory plasticity in a multi-stage process. In particular, inhibitory
synapses may not only play a role in controlling excitatory plasticity
during memory encoding, but also in supporting long-term memory
storage as they have a storage capacity much larger than the
excitatory synapses. Here, we propose to test this hypothesis by
combining chronic in vivo imaging of excitatory and inhibitory
synapses in the auditory cortex of mice in the context of an
associative memory task, with theoretical modeling of network
dynamics. Furthermore, we plan to interfere specifically with
molecular mechanisms essential for the potentiation of excitatory
synapses to disentangle the interdependencies of the plasticity of
excitatory and inhibitory synapses during learning. This interplay of
experiments and theoretical modeling will provide new insight on how
plasticity of excitatory and inhibitory circuits participate in learning and
memory processes, probably the most fundamental functions of our
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