Establishing the fundamental principles that underlie the integration of excitatory and inhibitory presynaptic input populations is crucial to understanding how individual cortical neurons transform signals from peripheral receptors. Here we review recent studies using novel tools to examine the functional properties of excitatory synaptic inputs and the tuning of excitation and inhibition onto individual neurons. New evidence challenges existing synaptic connectivity rules and suggests a more complex functional synaptic architecture that supports a broad range of operations, enabling single neurons to encode multiple sensory features and flexibly shape their computations in the face of diverse sensory input.

中文翻译：

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皮质突触架构支持灵活的感觉计算。

建立兴奋性和抑制性突触前输入群体整合的基本原理对于理解单个皮层神经元如何转换来自外周受体的信号至关重要。在这里，我们回顾了最近的研究，使用新颖的工具来检查兴奋性突触输入的功能特性以及对单个神经元的兴奋和抑制的调节。新的证据挑战了现有的突触连接规则，并提出了一种更复杂的功能性突触架构，该架构支持广泛的操作，使单个神经元能够编码多种感觉特征，并在面对不同的感觉输入时灵活地调整其计算。