Related papers: Subthreshold moment analysis of neuronal populatio…
The spiking activity of neocortical neurons exhibits a striking level of variability, even when these networks are driven by identical stimuli. The approximately Poisson firing of neurons has led to the hypothesis that these neural networks…
In this work we study the detection of weak stimuli by spiking neurons in the presence of certain level of noisy background neural activity. Our study has focused in the realistic assumption that the synapses in the network present…
The functional significance of correlations between action potentials of neurons is still a matter of vivid debates. In particular it is presently unclear how much synchrony is caused by afferent synchronized events and how much is…
Neural spike trains, which are sequences of very brief jumps in voltage across the cell membrane, were one of the motivating applications for the development of point process methodology. Early work required the assumption of stationarity,…
In the cerebral cortex, neurons are subject to a continuous bombardment of synaptic inputs originating from the network's background activity. This leads to ongoing, mostly subthreshold membrane dynamics that depends on the statistics of…
Cortical neurons are subject to sustained and irregular synaptic activity which causes important fluctuations of the membrane potential (Vm). We review here different methods to characterize this activity and its impact on spike generation.…
Electrical coupling between neurons is broadly present across brain areas and is typically assumed to synchronize network activity. However, intrinsic properties of the coupled cells can complicate this simple picture. Many cell types with…
Spike synchrony, which occurs in various cortical areas in response to specific perception, action and memory tasks, has sparked a long-standing debate on the nature of temporal organization in cortex. One prominent view is that this type…
We consider a threshold-crossing spiking process as a simple model for the activity within a population of neurons. Assuming that these neurons are driven by a common fluctuating input with Gaussian statistics, we evaluate the…
We tackle a quantification of synchrony in a large ensemble of interacting neurons from the observation of spiking events. In a simulation study, we efficiently infer the synchrony level in a neuronal population from a point process…
A classical view of neural coding relies on temporal firing synchrony among functional groups of neurons; however the underlying mechanism remains an enigma. Here we experimentally demonstrate a mechanism where time-lags among neuronal…
Neuronal dynamics is intrinsically unstable, producing activity fluctuations that are essentially scale-free. Here we show that while these scale-free fluctuations are independent of temporal input statistics, they can be entrained by input…
Recent advancements in measurement techniques have resulted in an increasing amount of data on neural activities recorded in parallel, revealing largely heterogeneous correlation patterns across neurons. Yet, the mechanistic origin of this…
We investigate the efficient transmission and processing of weak, subthreshold signals in a realistic neural medium in the presence of different levels of the underlying noise. Assuming Hebbian weights for maximal synaptic conductances --…
Cortical activity in-vivo displays relaxational time scales much longer than the membrane time constant of the neurons or the deactivation time of ionotropic synaptic conductances. The mechanisms responsible for such slow dynamics are not…
Spontaneous cortical population activity exhibits a multitude of oscillatory patterns, which often display synchrony during slow-wave sleep or under certain anesthetics and stay asynchronous during quiet wakefulness. The mechanisms behind…
Multi-electrode arrays (MEA) are increasingly used to investigate spontaneous neuronal network activity. The recorded signals comprise several distinct components: Apart from artefacts without biological significance, one can distinguish…
We investigate the stimulus-dependent tuning properties of a noisy ionic conductance model for intrinsic subthreshold oscillations in membrane potential and associated spike generation. On depolarization by an applied current, the model…
The cooperative behavior of neurons and neuronal areas associated with the synchronization behavior proves to be a fundamental neural mechanism. In addition, abnormal levels of synchronization have been related to unhealthy neural…
A rigorous understanding of brain dynamics and function requires a conceptual bridge between multiple levels of organization, including neural spiking and network-level population activity. Mounting evidence suggests that neural networks of…