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      Investigating the role of dendrites in pattern separation: A computational approach

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      ScienceOpen Posters
      ScienceOpen
      FENS Featured Regional Meeting 2015
      Computational Model, Dendrites, Dentate gyrus, Granule Cells, Inhibition, Pattern Separation
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            Abstract

            Objectives: In order to distinguish similar memories, it is experimentally confirmed that the hippocampus forms distinct representations of them. The ability of the brain to disambiguate memories is known as pattern separation. It has been proposed that dentate gyrus (DG) accomplishes this task, specifically through its principal cells, called granule cells (GCs). In this project we investigate the role of GC dendrites in pattern separation by modifying their biophysical and morphological characteristics. Methods & Results: We have implemented a morphologically simple, yet biologically relevant, computational model of the DG that implements pattern separation. The network consists of four well-studied neuronal types: granule, mossy, basket, and HIPP cells. The GC model consists of an integrate-and-fire somatic compartment connected to a variable numbers of active dendritic compartments. For simplicity reasons, without sacrificing detail, we used point neurons to simulate the remaining neuronal types. GCs major input from the Entorhinal Cortex (EC) is simulated as independent poisson spike trains at realistic firing frequencies. The output of the network corresponds to the spiking activity of GCs and is estimated on two highly overlapping input patterns. Pattern separation is accomplished when the similarity between these input patterns is greater than the similarity between the respective output patterns, as assessed by the Hamming Distance (HD) metric. Preliminary results show that there is a positive correlation between the separation efficiency and the number of GC dendrites. Conclusions: Our preliminary results suggest that dendrites of GC cells facilitate the pattern separation capabilities of the DG.

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            Conference
            ScienceOpen Posters
            ScienceOpen
            November 16 2015
            Author information
            https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1046-1201
            Article
            10.14293/P2199-8442.1.SOP-LIFE.PDCX4W.v1
            a66cbae5-7ccf-43d3-8622-a79b78f2bec9

            This work has been published open access under Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0 , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Conditions, terms of use and publishing policy can be found at www.scienceopen.com .

            FENS Featured Regional Meeting 2015
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            Neurosciences
            Computational Model, Dendrites, Dentate gyrus, Granule Cells, Inhibition, Pattern Separation

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