, 1980, Jack et al., 1981, Magee, 1999, Magee and Cook, 2000 and Stricker et al., selleckchem 1996). Furthermore, the local integration of synaptic inputs also appears to depend on dendritic region. For example, synaptic inputs to the distal apical dendrites of layer 5 pyramidal cells (Schiller et al.,

1997 and Yuste et al., 1994) or CA1 pyramidal cells (Golding and Spruston, 1998) can trigger local dendritic spikes, and the gating (Larkum et al., 1999) and boosting (Stuart and Häusser, 2001) effects of backpropagating spikes on neighboring synaptic input (Jarsky et al., 2005) can also be region specific. Finally, plasticity mechanisms also appear to depend on dendritic location (Gordon et al., 2006, Letzkus et al., 2006 and Sjöström and Häusser, 2006). These region-specific differences in dendritic properties may also be reflected in the preferential targeting of different types of inhibitory inputs (Somogyi,

1977 and Somogyi et al., 1998) and excitatory inputs (Markram et al., 1997, Thomson and Bannister, 1998, Petreanu et al., 2009 and Richardson et al., 2009) to specific dendritic domains. While these functional differences in macroscopic regions of the dendritic tree are now well established, it remains unclear whether the rules for synaptic integration are also heterogeneous on a smaller scale, and in particular at the level of single dendritic branches. This is especially important given the recent emphasis on the role of single dendritic Selleckchem DAPT branches as fundamental functional compartments for synaptic integration and plasticity (Larkum and Nevian, 2008, Losonczy and Magee, 2006, Losonczy et al., 2008, Major et al., 2008, Poirazi et al., 2003 and Branco and Häusser, 2010). Do synaptic inputs along a given dendrite behave approximately

equally in terms of their integrative properties, or are there systematic functional differences even along a single dendrite? To address this question we have taken advantage of the precise spatial and temporal control why of synaptic activation possible with two-photon glutamate uncaging, and probed the thin basal and apical oblique branches of layer 2/3 and layer 5 pyramidal cells, which receive the majority of the synaptic input to these neurons (Larkman, 1991 and Lübke and Feldmeyer, 2007). While strong EPSP attenuation occurs along individual branches of pyramidal cell basal dendrites (Nevian et al., 2007), it is not known if inputs at different distances along a branch are integrated similarly. We show that single cortical pyramidal cell dendrites exhibit a gradient of temporal summation and input gain that increases from proximal to distal locations. This suggests a progressive shift of computational strategies for synaptic inputs along single dendrites.