Experience-dependent compartmentalized dendritic plasticity in rat hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons

The excitability of individual dendritic branches is a plastic property of neurons. We found that experience in an enriched environment increased propagation of dendritic Na+ spikes in a subset of individual dendritic branches in rat hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons and that this effect was mainly mediated by localized downregulation of A-type K+ channel function. Thus, dendritic plasticity might be used to store recent experience in individual branches of the dendritic arbor.