I have been reading with fascination about the several molecular- and cellular-scale mechanisms and structural changes that underlie what we refer to as long-term plasticity. For instance, [1], [2], [3].
In particular, there seem to be at least: synaptic scaling, synaptic pruning, synaptogenesis, spinogenesis, neurogenesis.
My questions:
How do each of the above mechanisms/ events affect the classical extracellular single/ multi-unit spikes, postsynaptic potentials (LFPs), and local electric fields? Does a mechanistic forward model exist, which specifies the biophysical transformation from synapse-level changes to spikes and LFPs? Are there spike simulators out there that model these properties?
Using such a forward model, can we solve a statistical inverse problem to infer anything at all about these LTP/LTD-induced small-scale structural and functional changes?
For instance, one metric of analysis could be: post-spike-time filters (self-terms and cross-terms) inferred using statistical point-process models. Another could be the shape of the action potential itself, which is typically used only for spike sorting, and then discarded.
Has something along these lines been done? Or is it infeasible? If so, why?
Finally, If anyone could give a brief overview of the gamut of synapse-scale physiological/ imaging techniques used to characterize these mechanisms, I would be very grateful!