The Kirkwood lab of MBI, in collaboration with the Lee Lab, published a new paper in Nature Neuroscience entitled “Two distinct mechanisms for experience-dependent homeostasis.”  The study addressed the homeostatic adjustments needed to maintain neuronal firing within an optimal range for information encoding. The principal findings, which revise previous conceptions of homeostatic plasticity, are (1) the previously documented upregulation of excitatory synapses triggered by dark exposure results from a reduction in the threshold for Hebbian plasticity and( 2) these changes are triggered by a shift in the balance of spontaneous and visually driven activity.

Bridi MCD, de Pasquale R, Lantz CL, Gu Y, Borrell A, Choi SY, He K, Tran T, Hong SZ, Dykman A, Lee HK, Quinlan EM, Kirkwood A. Two distinct mechanisms for experience-dependent homeostasis. Nat Neurosci. 2018 May 14. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0150-0. [Epub ahead of print]