A bursting neuron can maintain its firing-pattern identity throughout an animal’s life, even though the ion-channel proteins underlying this identity are turned over on the timescale of days.
Today’s guest has proposed that neuronal identities are stored in the specific protein production rules, which are regulated by intracellular calcium signaling.
And how can animals reliably perform a learned task for weeks, even when the underlying neural representation drifts over time, so-called representational drift?
Links:
- O’Leary et al: “Cell Types, Network Homeostasis, and Pathological Compensation from a Biologically Plausible Ion Channel Expression Model”, Neuron, 2014
- Rule et al: “Causes and consequences of representational drift”, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2019
- Micou & O’Leary: “Representational drift as a window into neural and behavioural plasticity”, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2023
- Eddy: “’Antedisciplinary’ Science”, PLoS Computational Biology, 2005
- Homepage Timothy O’Leary
The podcast was recorded on May 12th, 2026 and lasts 1 hour and 43 minutes.
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