Astrocyte-neuron interaction through the extracellular ionic composition (CNS*2021 Poster Preview)
Channel: Carter Johnson
Date: 03/07/2021

Poster preview for CNS*2021 Online.

Joint work with Gregory Handy and Alla Borisyuk.

We are interested in how astrocytes modulate the synaptic signal between nearby neurons.  We explore one pathway of astrocyte-neuron interaction: how an astrocyte alters the extracellular concentrations of different ion species through intracellular calcium transients. We present a model of the astrocyte that includes biologically-constrained key transmembrane fluxes. Each component is carefully adapted from the literature to match the available data.  We find that astrocytes can modulate the activity of nearby neurons: depending on when a neuron receives an excitatory signal, the neuron can fire at a higher or lower frequency, or not fire at all.