Topic: heterosynaptic plasticity

Synaptic changes driven by Hebbian plasticity are unstable and require compensatory mechanisms to homeostatically control neuronal activity. Synaptic scaling regulates the synaptic efficacies to bring individual neurons to a set firing regime [1]. However, the timescales of synaptic scaling are too slow to counterbalance the rapid growth due to Hebbian mechanisms [2]. Heterosynaptic plasticity that operates on timescales similar to Hebbian processes can prevent runaway potentiation [3] but its ability to homeostatically control activity is uncertain. Here, we introduce aggregate scaling, a si