Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, United States.
Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, United States.
Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2014 Jun;26:96-102. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2013.12.015. Epub 2014 Jan 15.
The function of neocortical interneurons is still unclear, and, as often happens, one may be able to draw functional insights from considering the structure. In this spirit we describe recent structural results and discuss their potential functional implications. Most GABAergic interneurons innervate nearby pyramidal neurons very densely and without any apparent specificity, as if they were extending a 'blanket of inhibition', contacting pyramidal neurons often in an overlapping fashion. While subtypes of interneurons specifically target subcellular compartments of pyramidal cells, and they also target different layers selectively, they appear to treat all neighboring pyramidal cells the same and innervate them massively. We explore the functional implications and temporal properties of dense, overlapping inhibition by four interneuron populations.
大脑皮层中间神经元的功能仍不清楚，通常情况下，人们可以通过研究结构来获得功能上的认识。本着这种精神，我们描述了最近的结构研究结果，并讨论了它们潜在的功能意义。大多数 GABA 能中间神经元密集地、无明显特异性地支配附近的锥体神经元，就好像它们在延伸一个“抑制性毛毯”，以重叠的方式经常接触锥体神经元。虽然中间神经元的亚型专门针对锥体细胞的亚细胞区室，但它们也有选择性地针对不同的层，它们似乎对所有相邻的锥体细胞一视同仁，并大量支配它们。我们通过四种中间神经元群体来探索密集、重叠抑制的功能意义和时间特性。
