Abstract
At tripartite synapses, astrocytes are in close contact with neurons and contribute to various functions, from synaptic transmission, maintenance of ion homeostasis, and glutamate uptake to metabolism. However, disentangling the precise contribution of astrocytes to those phenomena and the underlying biochemical mechanisms is remarkably challenging. This notably results from their highly ramified morphology, the nanoscopic size of the majority of astrocyte processes, and the poorly understood information encoded by their spatiotemporally diverse calcium signals. This book chapter presents selected computational models of the involvement of astrocytes in glutamatergic transmission. The goal of this chapter is to present representative models of astrocyte function in conjunction with the biological questions they can investigate.
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Acknowledgments
K.L.s research was partially conducted while visiting the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) through the Theoretical Sciences Visiting Program (TSVP). A. D.s work was funded by the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University and by JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Postdoctoral Fellowship for Research in Japan (Standard, P21733). S.N. would like to acknowledge Shweta Shrotri, IISER Pune, for her help with Figs. 1 and 4.
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Lenk, K., Denizot, A., Genocchi, B., Seppälä, I., Taheri, M., Nadkarni, S. (2024). Computational Models of Astrocyte Function at Glutamatergic Synapses. In: Kukley, M. (eds) New Technologies for Glutamate Interaction. Neuromethods, vol 207. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3742-5_11
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