Homeostatic control of neuron excitability

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The nervous system must adapt and change to allow us to learn new tasks or to cope with injury and disease. One significant area of change is the amount of excitation neurons are exposed to. All neurons become 'wired' together in circuits that control our behaviours and potential to learn. These connections, termed synapses, are highly dynamic and can rapidly change their ability to either inhibit or activate partner neurons. These changes, when summed, have the potential to either leave a target neuron devoid of excitation or, by contrast, saturated. Either extreme can push neural circuits towards destabilisation and may result in diseases such as epilepsy. To guard against such extremes, neurons have developed homeostatic mechanisms to allow them to adjust how they respond to synaptic excitation. If excitation becomes too low, neurons boost their output by firing more than normal numbers of action potentials. If excitation becomes too great, these same neurons respond by reducing their action potential firing. Although well established, our understanding of the underlying components of homeostatic mechanisms is poor. Our studies utilise the fruitfly because its genome is fully sequenced and because it provides a simple model for the human nervous system.