Fig. 1

The two-compartment model of the synapse. a In the conventional single-compartment model, inputs are scaled linearly by the synapse, often characterised by a weighting factor w. b The addition of the presynaptic terminal results in a dynamic temporal filter prior to the postsynaptic gain control. This leads to a temporal decomposition of the presynaptic input spike train across presynaptic terminals along the axon. Importantly, this filter is dynamically regulated by ongoing neural activity to adjust to the statistics of pre- and postsynaptic activity