Rapid plasticity at dendritic spines mediated by a BDNF-dependent signaling pathway
What is the mechanism by which dendritic spines can change structure over a rapid time course? Though this may seem esoteric, it is probably how memories form and is thus utterly essential to neuroscience. Two new papers present some relevant data.
Two-photon imaging data of dendritic spines, from Wikipedia User:Tmhoogland
First, as has been shown several times, Harward et al show that glutamate uncaging at single dendritic spines leads to a rapid increase in spine volume after only ~ 1 minute that degrades over a period of several more minutes:
Harward et al; doi:10.1038/nature19766
Along the same time course as the dendritic spine volume increase, these authors also detected TrkB activation (using their amazing new FRET sensor), which was largely in the activated spine but also traveled to nearby spines and the dendrite itself:
Harward et al; doi:10.1038/nature19766
In what is to me probably their most compelling experiment, they show that hippocampal slices without BDNF have highly impaired volume changes in response to glutamate, and that this can be rescued by the addition of BDNF:
Harward et al; doi:10.1038/nature19766
They also present several lines of evidence that this is an autocrine mechanism, with BDNF released from spines by exosomes and binding to TrkB receptors on the same spine.
In a separate article in which most of the same authors contributed, they show that another protein, Rac1, is activated (ie, GTP-bound, leading to fluorescence) very quickly following glutamate uncaging at single spines:
Hedrick et al; doi:10.1038/nature19784
They also show that a similar rapid course of activation following glutamate uncaging occurs for the other Rho GTPases Cdc42 and RhoA.
Interestingly, they also show that these proteins mediate synaptic crosstalk, whereby the activation of one dendritic spines causes nearby dendritic spines to increase in strength. After several more experiments, here is their diagram explaining this mechanism:
Hedrick et al; doi:10.1038/nature19784
Overall I find their data trustworthy and important. The most interesting subsequent question for me is whether endogenous amounts of CaMKII, BDNF, TrkB, and Rho GTPase signaling components (e.g., Cdc42, RhoA, Rac1) vary across dendritic spines, and whether this helps mediate variability in spine-specific and spine neighbor-specific degrees of plasticity. My guess is that they do, but AFAICT it remains to be shown.
If it is true that spines, dendrites, and neurons vary in the expression and distribution of these proteins, then any attempt to build models of the brain, as well as models of individual brains that have any sort of dynamic component, probably need to measure and model the local densities of these protein mediators of plasticity.