Endocannabinoid-LTP Mediated by CB1 and TRPV1 Receptors Encodes for Limited Occurrences of Coincident Activity in Neocortex

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Synaptic efficacy changes, long-term potentiation (LTP) and depression (LTD), underlie various forms of learning and memory. Synaptic plasticity is generally assessed under prolonged activation, whereas learning can emerge from few or even a single trial. Here, we investigated the existence of rapid responsiveness of synaptic plasticity in response to a few numbers of spikes, in neocortex in a synaptic Hebbian learning rule, the spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). We investigated the effect of lowering the number of pairings from 100 to 50, and 10 on STDP expression, using whole-cell recordings from pyramidal cells in rodent somatosensory cortical brain slices. We found that a low number of paired stimulations induces LTP at neocortical layer 4-2/3 synapses. Besides the asymmetric Hebbian STDP reported in the neocortex induced by 100 pairings, we observed a symmetric anti-hebbian LTD for 50 pairings and unveiled a unidirectional Hebbian spike-timing-dependent LTP (tLTP) induced by 10-15 pairings. This tLTP was not mediated by NMDA receptors activation, but requires CB1 receptors and TRPV1 activated by endocannabinoids (eCBs). eCBs have been widely described as mediating short- and long-term synaptic depression. Here, the eCB-tLTP reported at neocortical synapses could constitute a substrate operating in the online learning of new associative memories or during the initial stages of learning. In addition, these findings should provide useful insight into the mechanisms underlying eCB-plasticity occurring during marijuana intoxication.