PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Casassus, Guillaume
AU  - Blanchet, Christophe
AU  - Mulle, Christophe
TI  - Short-Term Regulation of Information Processing at the Corticoaccumbens Synapse
AID  - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2466-05.2005
DP  - 2005 Dec 14
TA  - The Journal of Neuroscience
PG  - 11504--11512
VI  - 25
IP  - 50
4099  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/50/11504.short
4100  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/50/11504.full
SO  - J. Neurosci.2005 Dec 14; 25
AB  - In relation to expectation and delivery of reward, pyramidal neurons of the prefrontal cortex either switch from a single spiking mode to transient phasic bursting, or gradually increase their sustained tonic activity. Here, we examined how switching between firing modes affects information processing at the corticoaccumbens synapse. We report that increasing presynaptic firing frequency in a tonic manner either depresses or facilitates synaptic transmission, depending on initial probability of release. In contrast, repeated bursts of stimulation of cortical afferents trigger a new form of short-term potentiation of synaptic transmission (RB-STP) in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). RB-STP involves the regulation of axonal excitability mediated by 4-AP-sensitive potassium channels in afferent cortical neurons. Thus, in a tonic mode, information flow is tightly controlled by regulatory mechanisms at the level of presynaptic terminals, whereas switching to a bursting mode reliably enhances efficacy of information processing for all cortical afferents to NAc neurons.