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Disuse of a Central Synapse and Spontaneous Activity in the Optic Nerve

Abstract

CURRENT theories of learning assume that transmission through a synapse is facilitated by repeated use of that synapse1. Some support for this theory is provided by the occurrence of ‘post-tetanic potentiation’ at many synapses, although the duration of this effect, a few minutes at most, can scarcely reflect the long-lasting changes responsible for learning and similar phenomena. It has been argued that disuse of a synapse should produce the reverse effect, a decreased synaptic efficacy. The experiments of Eccles et al. 2 showed that after a few weeks disuse of the synapse between 1a afferents and motoneurones in the spinal cord there was almost complete absence of the post-synaptic response, but post-tetanic potentiation lasted for a much longer time than normally. In these experiments, disuse was obtained by severance of the afferent fibres, necessarily causing damage to the surviving parts of the neurones. These authors stressed the desirability of avoiding such damage in the study of disused synapses.

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BURKE, W., HAYHOW, W. Disuse of a Central Synapse and Spontaneous Activity in the Optic Nerve. Nature 188, 668–669 (1960). https://doi.org/10.1038/188668a0

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