ArticleeLife2015
Nanoconnectomic upper bound on the variability of synaptic plasticity.
Article in eLife, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 122 papers.
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Who cites it
122 citing papers in PubMed.
- Efficient coding predicts synaptic conductance.Biological cybernetics · 2026Article
- Highly energy-efficient information-handling dynamics of the brain.National science review · 2026Article
- Curvature-based machine-learning method for automated segmentation of dendritic spines.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- Spike-based alignment learning solves the weight transport problem.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Population sparseness determines strength of Hebbian plasticity for maximal memory lifetime in associative networks.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Telecommunication-inspired network models of healthy and diseased brains.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Synaptic-resolution connectomics: towards large brains and connectomic screening.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Formation, Organization, and Maintenance of Synaptic Vesicle Pools: From Molecules to Structure and Dynamics.Advances in neurobiology · 2026Review
- CURVATURE-BASED MACHINE LEARNING METHOD FOR AUTOMATED SEGMENTATION OF DENDRITIC SPINES.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- An anatomical substrate of credit assignment in reinforcement learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Ultrastructural analysis of synapses after induction of spike-timing-dependent plasticity.Cell reports methods · 2025Article
- A neuromorphic processor with on-chip learning for beyond-CMOS device integration.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Memory processing by hippocampal adult-born neurons.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2025Review
- Concept transfer of synaptic diversity from biological to artificial neural networks.Nature communications · 2025Article
- A generalized mathematical framework for the calcium control hypothesis describes weight-dependent synaptic plasticity.Journal of computational neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- Synaptic architecture of a memory engram in the mouse hippocampus.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- MCU expression in hippocampal CA2 neurons modulates dendritic mitochondrial morphology and synaptic plasticity.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Review
- A simple model for Behavioral Time Scale Synaptic Plasticity (BTSP) provides content addressable memory with binary synapses and one-shot learning.Nature communications · 2025Article
62 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Information in a computer is quantified by the number of bits that can be stored and recovered. An important question about the brain is how much information can be stored at a synapse through synaptic plasticity, which depends on the history of probabilistic synaptic activity. The strong correlation between size and efficacy of a synapse allowed us to estimate the variability of synaptic plasticity. In an EM reconstruction of hippocampal neuropil we found single axons making two or more synaptic contacts onto the same dendrites, having shared histories of presynaptic and postsynaptic activity. The spine heads and neck diameters, but not neck lengths, of these pairs were nearly identical in size. We found that there is a minimum of 26 distinguishable synaptic strengths, corresponding to storing 4.7 bits of information at each synapse. Because of stochastic variability of synaptic activation the observed precision requires averaging activity over several minutes.
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Registered trials
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.