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The Journal of Neuroscience, October 14, 2009, 29(41):12802-12806; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3346-09.2009

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Symposia and Mini-Symposia
Functional Properties of Synaptic Transmission in Primary Sense Organs

Joshua H. Singer,¹ Elisabeth Glowatzki,² Tobias Moser,³ Ben W. Strowbridge,⁴ Vikas Bhandawat,⁵ and Alapakkam P. Sampath⁶

¹Departments of Ophthalmology and Physiology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois 60611, ² Department of Otolaryngology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, ³Department of Otolaryngology and Center for Molecular Physiology of the Brain, University of Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany, ⁴Department of Neurosciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, ⁵Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, and ⁶Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089

Correspondence should be addressed to Alapakkam P. Sampath, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, USC Keck School of Medicine, 1501 San Pablo Street, ZNI 435, Los Angeles, CA 90089. Email: asampath{at}usc.edu

Sensory receptors transduce physical stimuli in the environment into neural signals that are interpreted by the brain. Although considerable attention has been given to how the sensitivity and dynamic range of sensory receptors is established, peripheral synaptic interactions improve the fidelity with which receptor output is transferred to the brain. For instance, synapses in the retina, cochlea, and primary olfactory system use mechanisms that fine-tune the responsiveness of postsynaptic neurons and the dynamics of exocytosis; these permit microcircuit interactions to encode efficiently the output of sensory receptors with the fidelity and dynamic range necessary to extract the salient features of the physical stimuli. The continuous matching of presynaptic and postsynaptic responsiveness highlight how the primary sensory organs have been optimized and can be modulated to resolve sparse sensory signals and to encode the entire range of receptor output.

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Received July 13, 2009; revised Aug. 11, 2009; accepted Aug. 13, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Alapakkam P. Sampath, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, USC Keck School of Medicine, 1501 San Pablo Street, ZNI 435, Los Angeles, CA 90089. Email: asampath{at}usc.edu

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