Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on February 9, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm235
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The Dynamical Response Properties of Neocortical Neurons to Temporally Modulated Noisy Inputs In Vitro
1 Department of Physiology, University of Bern, Bern CH-3012, Switzerland, 2 Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07102, USA, 3 Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zürich/ETH, Zürich CH 8057, Switzerland, 4 Department of Neurobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520, USA, 5 Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry, Brain Mind Institute, EPFL, Lausanne CH-1015, Switzerland
Address correspondence to Dr Michele Giugliano, EPFL SV BMI LNMC, Station 15, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Email: michele.giugliano{at}epfl.ch.
Cortical neurons are often classified by current–frequency relationship. Such a static description is inadequate to interpret neuronal responses to time-varying stimuli. Theoretical studies suggested that single-cell dynamical response properties are necessary to interpret ensemble responses to fast input transients. Further, it was shown that input-noise linearizes and boosts the response bandwidth, and that the interplay between the barrage of noisy synaptic currents and the spike-initiation mechanisms determine the dynamical properties of the firing rate. To test these model predictions, we estimated the linear response properties of layer 5 pyramidal cells by injecting a superposition of a small-amplitude sinusoidal wave and a background noise. We characterized the evoked firing probability across many stimulation trials and a range of oscillation frequencies (1–1000 Hz), quantifying response amplitude and phase-shift while changing noise statistics. We found that neurons track unexpectedly fast transients, as their response amplitude has no attenuation up to 200 Hz. This cut-off frequency is higher than the limits set by passive membrane properties (
50 Hz) and average firing rate (20 Hz) and is not affected by the rate of change of the input. Finally, above 200 Hz, the response amplitude decays as a power-law with an exponent that is independent of voltage fluctuations induced by the background noise.
Key Words: dynamics • frequency response • noise • oscillations • pyramidal cell • somatosensory cortex
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