 |
 |
SCIENCE at the Edge Interdisciplinary Physics Seminar Friday April 24, 11:30 a.m. with refreshments served at 11:15 a.m. 1400 BPS, Biomedical Physical Sciences Building Mark Reimers, MSU Neuroscience Program Balance Between Excitatory and Inhibitory Signaling in the Human Brain: Data and Models Theoretical and experimental work has suggested that matching of excitation to inhibition is crucial for brain function. Nevertheless individual variation in expression of key genes encoding inhibitory GABA-A receptors is surprisingly high. Such high variation raises questions about how the brain can compensate. We find in all human brain gene expression data sets that excitatory glutamate receptor mRNA levels co-vary tightly with those of GABA-A receptors over a wide range. Furthermore these levels are the best predictors of variation in hundreds of other synaptic genes. Finally schizophrenia risk is ten times higher at the low end of the range. The gamma rhythm is a key indicator of cortical function, found in all people, although schizophrenic patients show modest deficits. Nevertheless existing simulation are not robust to the high variation in key parameters evidenced in data. We find that the key to a robust model of gamma is to use a realistic highly skewed connectivity distribution as recently shown experimentally; this makes a more robust rhythm by better matching excitation to inhibition. Mark Reimers MSU Neuroscience Program Shawna Prater / Secretary Astrophysics Group Michigan State University 567 Wilson Road, Room 3261 Biomedical Physical Sciences Bldg East Lansing, MI 48824-2320 Ph: (517) 884-5601 Fax (517) 432-8802 [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> This e-mail may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you received this message in error, please delete it immediately.