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Presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma
When an action potential arrives at a synapse there is a large probability that no neurotransmitter is released. Surprisingly, simple computational models suggest that these synaptic failures enable information processing at lower metabolic costs. However, these models only consider information tran...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8716105/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34661525 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.69884 |
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author | Schug, Simon Benzing, Frederik Steger, Angelika |
author_facet | Schug, Simon Benzing, Frederik Steger, Angelika |
author_sort | Schug, Simon |
collection | PubMed |
description | When an action potential arrives at a synapse there is a large probability that no neurotransmitter is released. Surprisingly, simple computational models suggest that these synaptic failures enable information processing at lower metabolic costs. However, these models only consider information transmission at single synapses ignoring the remainder of the neural network as well as its overall computational goal. Here, we investigate how synaptic failures affect the energy efficiency of models of entire neural networks that solve a goal-driven task. We find that presynaptic stochasticity and plasticity improve energy efficiency and show that the network allocates most energy to a sparse subset of important synapses. We demonstrate that stabilising these synapses helps to alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma, thus connecting a presynaptic notion of importance to a computational role in lifelong learning. Overall, our findings present a set of hypotheses for how presynaptic plasticity and stochasticity contribute to sparsity, energy efficiency and improved trade-offs in the stability-plasticity dilemma. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8716105 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87161052022-01-05 Presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma Schug, Simon Benzing, Frederik Steger, Angelika eLife Neuroscience When an action potential arrives at a synapse there is a large probability that no neurotransmitter is released. Surprisingly, simple computational models suggest that these synaptic failures enable information processing at lower metabolic costs. However, these models only consider information transmission at single synapses ignoring the remainder of the neural network as well as its overall computational goal. Here, we investigate how synaptic failures affect the energy efficiency of models of entire neural networks that solve a goal-driven task. We find that presynaptic stochasticity and plasticity improve energy efficiency and show that the network allocates most energy to a sparse subset of important synapses. We demonstrate that stabilising these synapses helps to alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma, thus connecting a presynaptic notion of importance to a computational role in lifelong learning. Overall, our findings present a set of hypotheses for how presynaptic plasticity and stochasticity contribute to sparsity, energy efficiency and improved trade-offs in the stability-plasticity dilemma. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2021-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8716105/ /pubmed/34661525 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.69884 Text en © 2021, Schug et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Neuroscience Schug, Simon Benzing, Frederik Steger, Angelika Presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma |
title | Presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma |
title_full | Presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma |
title_fullStr | Presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma |
title_full_unstemmed | Presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma |
title_short | Presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma |
title_sort | presynaptic stochasticity improves energy efficiency and helps alleviate the stability-plasticity dilemma |
topic | Neuroscience |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8716105/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34661525 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.69884 |
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