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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience pp 1–5Cite as

Short Term Plasticity, Biophysical Models

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Definition

Short-term plasticity refers to changes in synaptic efficacy in response to presynaptic spiking that persist for a few seconds at most but more often decay over a timescale of a few hundred milliseconds. There are two primary types of short-term plasticity: short-term depression and short-term facilitation. Short-term depression is a reduction in synaptic efficacy that is often, but not always, caused by a transient depletion of neurotransmitter vesicles. Short-term facilitation is an increase in synaptic efficacy often caused by a transient increase in the number of vesicles released by presynaptic action potentials. The detailed biophysical mechanisms underlying synaptic facilitation are discussed in Facilitation, Biophysical Models, and we therefore focus on more phenomenological models of facilitation here.

Detailed Description

Stochastic Models of Short-Term Depression Arising from Neurotransmitter Depletion

Short-term depression is often believed to arise primarily...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

    Robert Rosenbaum

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  1. Robert Rosenbaum
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Correspondence to Robert Rosenbaum .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Rosenbaum, R. (2014). Short Term Plasticity, Biophysical Models. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_358-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_358-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6

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