Calcium: The answer to life, the universe, and everything

Abstract

Calcium plays a critical role in numerous physiological processes, both inside and out of the nervous system, and thus is widely studied by both experimental and theoretical neuroscientists. While the role of calcium in the nervous system has been studied by experimentalists for many decades, the last 20 years has seen considerable growth in the use of computational modeling as a tool to unravel the complex cellular mechanisms requiring calcium. For example, computational modeling has enhanced our understanding of processes such as release of neurotransmitter and excitation-contraction coupling in myocytes. Long-term synaptic plasticity and the control of neuronal activity patterns are two additional functions of calcium that are of particular interest to computational neuroscientists. This chapter presents a brief history of computational modeling studies that investigate either the relationship between calcium and long-term synaptic plasticity, or the relationship between calcium and neuronal firing patterns. The focus is on the subset of models that made advancements either in the form of the model or by addressing a novel scientific question.