SYNAPTIC TRANSMISSION OF VARIOUS SPIKE TRAINS BETWEEN PRIMARY AFFERENT FIBER AND SPINAL DORSAL HORN NEURON IN THE RAT
大鼠初级传入纤维与脊髓背角神经元间的动作电序列的突触传递

Peripheral sensory neurons encode continuous, time-varying signals into spike trains, which are finally relayed to the brain through synaptic transmission. But how various types of spike trains are transmitted across chemical synapses between neurons is still an open question. Here the synaptic transmission of various spike trains between primary Aδ afferent fiber and spinal dorsal horn neuron was investigated. Regular, periodic and stochastic stimulus trains were composed of either brief bursts or single pulses. "Events" were defined as the longest sequences of spikes with all interspike intervals less than or equal to a certain threshold and the interevent intervals (IEIs) were extracted from spike trains. The IEI analysis by time-IEI graphs and return maps showed that the main temporal structure of presynaptic input trains could be detected in postsynaptic output trains, especially under brief-burst stimulation. By calculating the mutual information between input and output trains, it was found that brief bursts could more reliably transmit the information carried by input trains across synapses. These results suggested that the main temporal characters of peripheral input trains can be transmitted across synapses, and that brief-burst firing is more effective during synapse transmission of neural information. The present research takes a step forward to exploring the mystery of neural coding from the aspect of synaptic transmission.