Robustness of STDP to spike timing jitter

Abstract

In Hebbian plasticity, neural circuits adjust their synaptic weights depending on patterned firing of action potential on either side of the synapse. Spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) is an experimental implementation of Hebbs postulate that relies on the precise order and the millisecond timing of the paired activities in pre- and postsynaptic neurons. In recent years, STDP has attracted considerable attention in computational and experimental neurosciences. However, canonical STDP is assessed with deterministic (constant) spike timings and time intervals between successive pairings, thus exhibiting a regularity that strongly differs from the biological variability. Hence, the emergence of STDP from noisy neural activity patterns as expected in in vivo-like firing remains unresolved. Here, we used noisy STDP stimulations where the spike timing and/or the interval between successive pairings were jittered. We explored with a combination of experimental neurophysiology and mathematical modeling, the impact of jittering on three distinct forms of STDP at corticostriatal synapses: NMDAR-mediated tLTP, endocannabinoid-mediated tLTD and endocannabinoid-mediated tLTP. As the main result, we found a differential sensitivity to jittered spike timing: NMDAR-tLTP was highly fragile whereas endocannabinoid-plasticity (tLTD and tLTP) appeared more resistant. Moreover, when the frequency or the number of pairings was increased, NMDAR-tLTP became more robust and could be expressed despite strong jittering of the spike timing. Taken together, our results identify endocannabinoid-mediated plasticity as a robust form of STDP while the sensitivity to jitter of NMDAR-tLTP varies with activity frequency. This provides new insights into the mechanisms at play during the different phases of learning and memory and the emergence of Hebbian plasticity in in vivo-like firing.