Dynamic properties of corticogeniculate excitatory transmission in the rat dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus in vitro

The feedback excitation from the primary visual cortex to principal cells in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) is markedly enhanced with firing frequency. This property presumably reflects the ample short-term plasticity at the corticogeniculate synapse. The present study aims to explore corticogeniculate excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) evoked by brief trains of stimulation with whole-cell patch-clamp recordings in dLGN slices from DA-HAN rats. The EPSCs rapidly increased in amplitude with the first two or three impulses followed by a more gradual growth. A double exponential function with time constants 39 and 450 ms empirically described the growth for 5-25 Hz trains. For lower train frequencies (down to I Hz) a third component with time constant 4.8 s had to be included. The different time constants are suggested to represent fast and slow components of facilitation and augmentation. The time constant of the fast component changed with the extracellular calcium ion concentration as expected for a facilitation mechanism involving an endogenous calcium buffer that is more efficiently saturated with larger calcium influx. Concerning the function of the corticogeniculate feedback pathway, the different components of short-term plasticity interacted to increase EPSC amplitudes on a linear scale to firing frequency in the physiological range. This property makes the corticogeniculate synapse well suited to function as a neuronal amplifier that enhances the thalamic transfer of visual information to the cortex.