Related papers: Nonlinear gap junctions enable long-distance propa…
Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in neuron-glia communication. This interest stems from the realization that glia participates in cognitive functions and information processing and is involved in many brain disorders and…
Many cells use calcium signalling to carry information from the extracellular side of the plasma membrane to targets in their interior. Since virtually all cells employ a network of biochemical reactions for Ca2+ signalling, much effort has…
We introduce a simple procedure of multivariate signal analysis to uncover the functional connectivity among cells composing a living tissue and describe how to apply it for extracting insight on the effect of drugs in the tissue. The…
In the brain, both neurons and glial cells work in conjunction with each other during information processing. Stimulation of neurons can cause calcium oscillations in astrocytes which in turn can affect neuronal calcium dynamics. The…
Deciphering the complex interactions between neurotransmission and astrocytic $Ca^{2+}$ elevations is a target promising a comprehensive understanding of brain function. While the astrocytic response to excitatory synaptic activity has been…
Gap junctions are channels in cell membranes allowing ions to pass directly between cells. They connect cells throughout the body, including heart myocytes, neurons, and astrocytes. Propagation mediated by gap junctions can be passive or…
Understanding the role of astrocytes in brain computation is a nascent challenge, promising immense rewards, in terms of new neurobiological knowledge that can be translated into artificial intelligence. In our ongoing effort to identify…
Unicellular organisms are open metabolic systems that need to process information about their external environment in order to survive. In most types of tissues and organisms, cells use calcium signaling to carry information from the…
The brain consists not only of neurons but also of non-neuronal cells, including astrocytes. Recent discoveries in neuroscience suggest that astrocytes directly regulate neuronal activity by releasing gliotransmitters such as glutamate. In…
The participation of astrocytes in brain computation was formally hypothesized in 1992, coinciding with the discovery that these glial cells display a complex form of Ca2+ excitability. This fostered conceptual advances centered on the…
Cortical oscillations are thought to be involved in many cognitive functions and processes. Several mechanisms have been proposed to regulate oscillations. One prominent but understudied mechanism is gap-junctional coupling. Gap junctions…
Collective sensing by interacting cells is observed in a variety of biological systems, and yet a quantitative understanding of how sensory information is collectively encoded is lacking. Here we investigate the ATP-induced calcium dynamics…
Coordinated responses to environmental stimuli are critical for multicellular organisms. To overcome the obstacles of cell-to-cell heterogeneity and noisy signaling dynamics within individual cells, cells must effectively exchange…
Ca$^{2+}$ plays an important role in cell signal transduction. Its intracellular propagation is the most basic process of Ca$^{2+}$ signaling, such as calcium wave and double messenger system. In this work, with both numerical simulation…
Metabolic oscillations in single cells underlie the mechanisms behind cell synchronization and cell-cell communication. For example, glycolytic oscillations mediated by biochemical communication between cells may synchronize the pulsatile…
We examine the synchrony of the dynamics of localized [Ca^{2+}]_i oscillations in internal pool of astrocytes via diffusing coupling of a network of such cells in a certain topology where cytosolic Ca^{2+} and inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate…
Short-term presynaptic plasticity designates variations of the amplitude of synaptic information transfer whereby the amount of neurotransmitter released upon presynaptic stimulation changes over seconds as a function of the neuronal firing…
The investigation of the neuronal environment allows us to better understand the activity of a cerebral region as a whole. The recent experimental evidences of the presence of transporters for glutamate and GABA in both neuronal and…
In this letter we present the results of a simple model for intercellular communication via calcium oscillations, motivated in part by a recent experimental study. The model describes two cells (a "donor" and "sensor") whose intracellular…
Signal propagation in neuronal dendrites represents the basis for interneuron communication and information processing in the brain. Here we take into account charge inhomogeneities arising in the vicinity of ion channels in cytoplasm and…