Functions
There are a number of hypotheses regarding the function of backpropagation of action potentials. In addition to synaptic plasticity, it is also hypothesized to be involved in dendrodendritic inhibition, boosting synaptic responses, resetting membrane potential, retrograde actions at synapses and conditional axonal output. Backpropagation is believed to help form LTP (long term potentiation) and Hebbian plasticity at hippocampal synapses. Since artificial LTP induction, using microelectrode stimulation, voltage clamp, etc. requires the postsynaptic cell to be slightly depolarized when EPSPs are elicited, backpropagation can serve as the means of depolarization of the postsynaptic cell.
Read more about this topic: Neural Backpropagation
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Mark the babe
Not long accustomed to this breathing world;
One that hath barely learned to shape a smile,
Though yet irrational of soul, to grasp
With tiny finger—to let fall a tear;
And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves,
To stretch his limbs, bemocking, as might seem,
The outward functions of intelligent man.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that there are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)