Dopamine modulation of spike-timing-dependent plasticity for spatio-temporal spike pattern detection in single neurons.

Dopamine (DA) is an important neuromodulator that has been suggested to play key roles in a range of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, its computational impact at a general single-neuron level has not been elucidated. Here, we extended a spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP)-based single-neuron spatio-temporal pattern detection model by incorporating a DA input and DA-type STDP modulation. We analyzed the direct effect of the DA-type STDP curve and the effect of DA release. We found that the DA-type STDP curve accelerates learning but may promote coarse potentiation of the synaptic efficacy, which leads to false detections. It was also shown that DA can improve the pattern-detection performance up to a 44% success rate (2.44 × control) with no false detection, but an excessive DA release or a DA release with too short a delay induces false detection. These results suggest that DA can maintain the pattern detection ability only when released within a limited concentration and a sufficient delay.