I use these terms very loosely to mean the increase (LTP) or decrease (LTD) of potential delivered by a synapse to the neuron body. I used some forms of LTP/LTD in my previous versions but they were never meant to approach the biological equivalents. Now, I spent some time to read what is known in biology about LTP and LTD and while there are tones of papers on the subject, I could not find anything that has explored the need for such mechanisms.. They are used in “leaning”, that’s a very vague statement.. I’ve been thinking and I cannot find a use case for them. I found a use for an LTD event during depolarization of postsynaptic neuron, but no uses for LTD/P associated with low/high frequency inputs.. What is low/high frequency ? They seem arbitrary to me. I can use whatever frequency in my code, I should be able to link these terms with something… but to what ?
However, I believe the main reason for having an altered synaptic potential is to change the firing frequency of the postsynaptic neuron… This conclusion troubles me, firing rate is crucial in selecting / separating events (inputs), any alteration (or missing alteration) can be picked up by the inhibitory neuron and amplified, resulting in vastly different results even when the initial change in synaptic output was extremely small. So if I don’t add them now and don’t understand them, they may come back to haunt me…. yet, I don’t need them..
My plan is to explore the implication of LTP and LTD on various other variables but with no certain goal in mind, I find that both boring and difficult.. Is there a paper showing they are actually “long” term changes ? I found a paper saying that very few last up to a week and most alterations vanish within hours. I don’t consider that, long term…
Does LTP/LTD stop ever ? with age perhaps ? for certain layers maybe ? Do they become less frequent ? So many questions… Given my difficulties in transporting signal through layers is still feasible that some LTP/D events would be extremely difficult to change in deeper layers, so they in the end could be viewed as long term and part of the learning mechanism.. So they are long term because they are hard to change… speculations …