Gorur Shandilya, S. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2020

Coupling between fast and slow oscillator circuits in Cancer borealis is temperature compensated

Coupled oscillatory circuits are ubiquitous in nervous systems. Given that most biological processes are temperature sensitive, it is remarkable that the neuronal circuits of poikilothermic animals can maintain coupling across a wide range of temperatures. Within the stomatogastric ganglion (STG) of the crab, Cancer borealis, the fast pyloric rhythm (~1Hz) and the slow gastric mill rhythm (~0.1Hz) are precisely coordinated at ~11{degrees}C such that there is an integer number of pyloric cycles per gastric mill cycle (integer coupling). Upon increasing temperature from 7-23{degrees}C, both oscillators showed similar temperature-dependent increases in cycle frequency, and integer coupling between the circuits was conserved. Thus, although both rhythms show temperature dependent changes in rhythm frequency, the processes that couple these circuits maintain their coordination over a wide range of temperature. Such robustness to temperature changes could be part of a toolbox of processes that enables neural circuits to maintain function despite global perturbations.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Homeostatic plasticity rules that compensate for cell size are susceptible to channel deletion

Neurons can increase in size dramatically during growth. In many species neurons must preserve their intrinsic dynamics and physiological function across several length scales. For example, neurons in crustacean central pattern generators generate similar activity patterns despite multiple-fold increases in their size and changes in morphology. This scale invariance hints at regulation mechanisms that compensate for size changes by somehow altering membrane currents. Using conductance-based neuron models, we asked whether simple activity-dependent feedback can maintain intrinsic voltage dynamics in a neuron as its size is varied. Despite relying only on a single sensor that measures time-averaged intracellular calcium as a proxy for activity, we found that this regulation mechanism could regulate conductance densities of ion channels, and was robust to changes in the size of the neuron. By mapping changes in cell size onto perturbations in the space of conductance densities of all channels, we show how robustness to size change coexists with sensitivity to perturbations that alter the ratios of maximum conductances of different ion channel types. Our findings suggest that biological regulation that is optimized for coping with expected perturbations such as size changes will be vulnerable to other kinds of perturbations such as channel deletions.

neuroscience↗