The axon does not contain specific behavior. We might add balancing of ATP within PRE later. Here we comprehend it as a “cable” transporting the AP from SOMA to Presynapse. It expands BEH-PRE which:
- the associations between BEH-PRE, BEH-POST e BEH-SYN is performed by the module that instantiate the Neurons and the Atrocytes, for example BEH-EXH or BEH-INH from winnertakeall.
The presynapse is the sending terminal of a neuron — a small bulb at the tip of an axon whose job is to release chemical signals, called neurotransmitters (NT), into the synaptic cleft, the narrow gap that separates it from the receiving neuron's postsynapse.
To do this, the presynapse maintains a stockpile of NT packed inside small membrane bubbles called vesicles. These vesicles are organised in two pools: a reserve pool (RP), which is the deep storage, and a readily-releasable pool (RRP), which is the small set of vesicles docked at the membrane and ready to fire immediately. When a spike arrives — an electrical pulse called an action potential — it briefly opens specialised calcium channels (VGCCs) in the membrane. Calcium (Ca²⁺) rushes in, and the sudden local surge of calcium triggers the docked vesicles to fuse with the membrane and pour their NT into the cleft.
But the presynapse does not just release blindly. It runs several interlocking feedback loops that continuously regulate how much it releases, how quickly it recovers, and when it should stop entirely to protect itself.
The amount of Ca²⁺ that enters is itself regulated. Three brakes — CDI, eCB, and mGluR — each reduce the effective number of open channels in their own way and on their own timescale. CDI (calcium-dependent inactivation) is a channel-level self-brake: Ca²⁺ that enters during a spike physically blocks the same channels from reopening, accumulating gradually across repeated spikes. eCB (endocannabinoids) is a retrograde signal synthesised by the receiving neuron when it is over-stimulated; it travels backward across the cleft to suppress the presynaptic channels. mGluR is a presynaptic autoreceptor that senses accumulated NT in the cleft and reduces channel conductance through a slower chemical signalling cascade.
The release of vesicles itself is regulated by two separate NT-sensing mechanisms. One acts locally at the release site in the same millisecond: high NT already in the cleft reduces how many docked vesicles fuse, trimming the current release event. The other is the mGluR pathway described above, which acts more slowly and suppresses the next spike's Ca²⁺ influx rather than the current one.
After release the vesicle stockpile must be replenished. The RRP is refilled from the RP on a timescale of seconds, at a speed that depends on recent calcium history — the synapse replenishes faster when it has been active recently. The RP itself is replenished over minutes via a chemical shuttle from the neighbouring astrocyte, a support cell that recycles the released NT back into a precursor form and ships it back to the presynapse.
The astrocyte is also the gateway to the energy supply. All of the active processes — pumping Ca²⁺ back out, docking vesicles, running the membrane pumps that restore the electrical gradient after each spike — consume ATP, the cell's energy currency. The astrocyte delivers glucose, which sets the rate of ATP replenishment. Under sustained high-frequency firing, this energy demand can outpace supply: ATP falls, the Ca²⁺ pumps slow, residual Ca²⁺ accumulates between spikes, CDI cannot recover, and the VGCCs lock shut. The synapse goes silent — not because it is broken, but because it is protecting itself from the toxic consequence of uncontrolled Ca²⁺ overload, a process known as excitotoxicity. This self-imposed silence is the central emergent behaviour we want to comprehend.
- Removing ATP removes the metabolic silencing cascade entirely. The mins behavior now only does one thing: replenish the NT reserve. If we want the synapse to still be able to fail under sustained firing, the mechanism would have to come from NT depletion alone (RP exhausted, nothing to replenish) rather than from pump failure and Ca²⁺ accumulation.
- "Ca²⁺ cleared slowly" replaces PMCA, NCX, and SERCA with a single exponential decay. This means Ca²⁺ will still accumulate under high firing if the decay is slow relative to the spike rate, which preserves some of the residual-Ca²⁺ dynamic even without the full pump machinery.
**Simplified Behaviors**:
**— ms:**
- AP fires → VGCCs open, Ca²⁺ enters
- Ca²⁺ cleared slowly (single decay term, no pump detail)
- Ca²⁺ trace (Tr_Ca) integrates every ms
- NT released into cleft — rate determined by Ca²⁺ level and NT already in cleft
- **Ca2+**: Calcium Ion entering the Presynapse when VCGG open that influence NT release. Normally returns to ~0 between spikes; stays elevated when pumps fail. They are key to check the concentration, release NT and modulation
- **Rrp**: Readily Releasable Pool: The Readily Releasable Pool consists of the vesicles that are "docked" and "primed" at the active zone of the synapse. This pool is very small (usually only about 0.5% to 5% of total vesicles) and can be exhausted quickly during high-frequency firing, leading to "short-term depression" of the signal. Here we consider them as NT ready to be released.
- **Rp**: Reserve Pool: The bulk of the vesicles held further back in the terminal, often tethered by a protein called synapsin. These are only mobilized during intense, prolonged stimulation. This makes up the vast majority of the vesicles (up to 80% or 90%). Here we consider them NT in reserve that can be transfered to RRP and created using Glutamine from Astorcyte.
- **NT**: Neuro Transmitter, released in the synapse by the vescicles. The release increses NT and decreases RRP
Ci sono 4 casi che dipendono da RRP, Ca2+ e NT. L'idea e' che la quantita' di RRP sia il driver principale. Gli NT liberati sono di piu' al crescere di RRP e Ca2+ e di meno al crescere di NT. Gli NT nella sinapsi fanno da moderazione alla ulteriore liberazione di NT, ma non bloccano mai totalmente. NT suppression only matters when everything else is already at maximum — which is exactly the biological purpose: it prevents runaway release during peak activity, not during moderate activity.
Serve a dare la velocita' al trasporto di vesicles da RP a RRP. Ha un decadimento proprio il che dice alla Presinapsi di accellerare se da poco c'e' stata una spike, altrimenti di andare piu' piano. So after one second of silence Tr_Ca has fallen to ~37% of its peak value, after two seconds to ~14%, after three seconds to ~5%. It asymptotes toward zero but never exactly reaches it. Between spikes, Ca2+ falls toward zero as the pumps clear it.
Voltage-Controlled Gated Channels: Qui per ora non gestiamo l'evoluzione della depolarizzazione. Alla scomparsa dell'AP, i VGCC smettono di funzionare.
-- CDI is calcium-dependent inactivation of VGCCs. The inactivation happens because Ca²⁺ enters through the channel and binds to a calmodulin tethered to the channel's intracellular face, physically blocking it from reopening. This is a local, channel-specific event — it requires Ca²⁺ to be flowing through that channel right now, not residual Ca²⁺ drifting in the cytosol between spikes.
-- The recovery, by contrast, should run every millisecond unconditionally — CDI de-inactivation is a continuous process that proceeds whenever Ca²⁺ dissociates from calmodulin, which depends on the ambient Ca_micro level at all times.
- mGluR con concentrazione NT (forse su tempi di sec e quindi avremmo bisono di un altro Tub)
- **Open** — zero active brakes. mGluR alone never escapes this group because its ceiling is alpha_mGluR = 0.4, meaning even at full it only removes 40% of conductance, leaving 60% — still above the 85% threshold. So mGluR is irrelevant to the open/not-open boundary. Only CDI and eCB decide.
- **Reduced/partial** — exactly one meaningful brake active. Either CDI has started building (medium), or eCB has risen from sustained postsynaptic activity, but not both simultaneously. The system is aware something is happening but has not compounded yet. This is the normal operating range during moderate sustained firing.
- **Suppressed** — two brakes multiplying. The compounding is what defines this zone — no single variable alone produces it (except CDI approaching full). 0.5 × 0.5 = 0.25 remaining is where the synapse starts losing significant transmission efficacy. Biologically this is the pre-silence warning zone: CDI is building from residual Ca²⁺ while eCB is already engaged from postsynaptic activity.
- **Closed — CDI** = full is the only reliable hard rule. Because CDI can reach 1.0 and appears as (1 - CDI_factor) in the formula, it alone drives conductance to zero regardless of eCB and mGluR state. The three-brake overlap corner case (eCB=full + CDI=medium + mGluR=full) also reaches here, but in practice CDI reaching full is the primary biological mechanism.
