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.
