Calcium is known to play a fundamental role in synaptic plasticity.
However, it is still unclear to what extent the dynamics of calcium
concentration in post-synaptic spines alone can account for the
phenomenology of plasticity. In this talk, I will first present a
simplified calcium-based synaptic plasticity model, and show that it
can reproduce quantitatively a large amount of experimental data in
several preparations (hippocampal cultures, hippocampal slices and
cortical slices). Differences between plasticity outcomes in such
preparations are predicted to arise due to differences in parameters
controlling calcium dynamics (such as the extracellular calcium
concentration). I will then present some consequences of this
plasticity rule at the network level.