Neurotransmissão glutamatérgica e plasticidade sináptica: Aspectos moleculares, clínicos e filogenéticos

Abstract

Communication between neurons is subject to constant changes, even in the adult brain. This ability of neural circuits to strengthen or weaken their specific synaptic interactions (a phenomenon known as synaptic plasticity) may occur according to different environmental demands, which favors the idea that dynamic changes in the communication between neurons underlie behavioral flexibility (i.e., learning and memory processes). In recent decades, advances in neuroscience has allowed a better understanding of synaptic plasticity, specially the plasticity of glutamatergic synapses, whose molecular processes of synaptic change appear to be among the most common throughout the central nervous system. Much of this progress in basic science has contributed to a better understanding of pathological processes involving the glutamatergic synapses, such as Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, the growing understanding about the physiology of glutamatergic communication has helped explain how synapses, in general, would have originated and evolved in the phylogenetic scale of the Metazoa. This review attempts to address clinical aspects of glutamatergic neurotransmission, contextualizing such aspects with basic knowledge about synaptic plasticity and evolution of synapses.