ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2007
The optimal height of the synaptic cleft.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 98 papers.
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98 citing papers in PubMed, 179 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Calcium dynamics in small spaces: Lessons learned from modeling in dendritic spines.Biophysical journal · 2025Review
- The effects of exercise on pain and anxiety following rotator cuff injury: the role of paraventricular nucleus synaptic plasticity.Journal of orthopaedic translation · 2025Article
- Changes in Neuroimmunological Synapses During Cerebral Ischemia.Translational stroke research · 2025Review
- Experimentally Constrained Mechanistic and Data-Driven Models for Simulating NMDA Receptor Dynamics.Biomedicines · 2025Article
- Interactions of Therapeutic Antibodies With Presynaptically-Released Misfolded Proteins in Neurodegenerative Diseases. A Spatial Monte-Carlo Simulation Study.CPT: pharmacometrics & systems pharmacology · 2025Article
- Synaptic cleft geometry modulates NMDAR opening probability by tuning neurotransmitter residence time.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Morphological trapping of neurotransmitters in synaptic clefts: A new dimension in neural plasticity.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Memory engram synapse 3D molecular architecture visualized by cryoCLEM-guided cryoET.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
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38 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Signal integration in the brain is determined by the size and kinetics of rapid synaptic responses. The latter, in turn, depends on the concentration profile of neurotransmitter in the synaptic cleft. According to a traditional view, narrower clefts should correspond to higher intracleft concentrations of neurotransmitter, and therefore to the enhanced activation of synaptic receptors. Here, we argue that narrowing the cleft also increases electrical resistance of the intracleft medium and therefore reduces local receptor currents. We employ detailed theoretical analyses and Monte Carlo simulations to propose that these two contrasting phenomena result in a relatively narrow range of cleft heights at which the synaptic receptor current reaches its maximum. Over a physiological range of synaptic parameters, the "optimum" height falls between approximately 12 and 20 nm. This range is consistent with the structure of central synapses reported by electron microscopy. Therefore, our results suggest that a simple fundamental principle may underlie the synaptic cleft architecture: to maximize synaptic strength.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.