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Volume 17, Number 15,
Issue of August 1, 1997
pp. 5858-5867
Copyright ©1997 Society for Neuroscience
Quantitative Ultrastructural Analysis of Hippocampal
Excitatory Synapses
Received March 25, 1997; revised May 5, 1997; accepted May 19, 1997.
Thomas Schikorski and
Charles F. Stevens
Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory and Howard Hughes Medical
Institute, The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California 92037
From three-dimensional reconstructions of CA1 excitatory synapses
in the rodent hippocampus and in culture, we have estimated statistical
distributions of active zone and postsynaptic density (PSD) sizes
(average area ~0.04 µm2), the number of active
zones per bouton (usually one), the number of docked vesicles per
active zone (~10), and the total number of vesicles per bouton
(~200), and we have determined relationships between these
quantities, all of which vary from synapse to synapse but are highly
correlated. These measurements have been related to synaptic
physiology. In particular, we propose that the distribution of active
zone areas can account for the distribution of synaptic release
probabilities and that each active zone constitutes a release site as
identified in the standard quantal theory attributable to .
Key words:
synaptic vesicle;
active zone;
release;
statistical
distribution;
hippocampus;
release probability
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