Figure 7.

Synaptic competition at the dendrite. (A) Three simulated synapses compete to activate the postsynaptic neuron. Each of the synapses can be chosen to be excitatory or inhibitory, here is shown the configuration with the distal synapses as excitatory. The distances dA, dB, and dC indicate the relative attenuation of the activation for each contributing synapse. (B) Synaptic strength variation due to three competing excitatory synapses a small distance from each other. (C) Detail of the postsynaptic response due to three excitatory inputs. The response is dynamically stable. (D) Raster plot of the three presynaptic input patterns (A, B, and C) where all are excitatory, and the resulting postsynaptic response. Notice that the resulting post-synaptic pattern is dynamically stable and not merely the sum of the inputs.