A Simple Stimulatory Device for Evoking Point-like Tactile Stimuli: A Searchlight for LFP to Spike Transitions

Current neurophysiological research has the aim to develop methodologies to investigate the signal route from neuron to neuron, namely in the transitions ...

national research council

Local Field Potentials (LFPs) integrate multiple neuronal events like synaptic inputs and intracellular potentials. LFP spatiotemporal features are particularly relevant in view of their applications both in research (e.g. for understanding brain rhythms, inter-areal neural communication and neuronal coding) and in the clinics (e.g. for improving invasive Brain-Machine Interface devices). However the relation between LFPs and spikes is complex and not fully understood. As spikes represent the fundamental currency of neuronal communication this gap in knowledge strongly limits our comprehension of neuronal phenomena underlying LFPs. We investigated the LFP-spike relation during tactile stimulation in primary somatosensory (S-I) cortex in the rat. First we quantified how reliably LFPs and spikes code for a stimulus occurrence. Then we used the information obtained from our analyses to design a predictive model for spike occurrence based on LFP inputs. The model was endowed with a flexible meta-structure whose exact form, both in parameters and structure, was estimated by using a multi-objective optimization strategy. Our method provided a set of nonlinear simple equations that maximized the match between models and true neurons in terms of spike timings and Peri Stimulus Time Histograms. We found that both LFPs and spikes can code for stimulus occurrence with millisecond precision, showing, however, high variability. Spike patterns were predicted significantly above chance for 75% of the neurons analysed. Crucially, the level of prediction accuracy depended on the reliability in coding for the stimulus occurrence. The best predictions were obtained when both spikes and LFPs were highly responsive to the stimuli. Spike reliability is known to depend on neuron intrinsic properties (i.e. on channel noise) and on spontaneous local network fluctuations. Our results suggest that the latter, measured through the LFP response variability, play a dominant role.

Predicting spike occurrence and neuronal responsiveness from LFPs in primary somatosensory cortex.

The analysis of the brain in terms of integrated neural networks may offer insights on the reciprocal relation between structure and information processing. Even with inherent technical limits, many studies acknowledge neuron spatial arrangements and communication modes as key factors. In this perspective, we investigated the functional organization of neuronal networks by explicitly assuming a specific functional topology, the small-world network. We developed two different computational approaches. Firstly, we asked whether neuronal populations actually express small-world properties during a definite task, such as a learning task. For this purpose we developed the Inductive Conceptual Network (ICN), which is a hierarchical bio-inspired spiking network, capable of learning invariant patterns by using variable-order Markov models implemented in its nodes. As a result, we actually observed small-world topologies during learning in the ICN. Speculating that the expression of small-world networks is not solely related to learning tasks, we then built a de facto network assuming that the information processing in the brain may occur through functional small-world topologies. In this de facto network, synchronous spikes reflected functional small-world network dependencies. In order to verify the consistency of the assumption, we tested the null-hypothesis by replacing the small-world networks with random networks. As a result, only small world networks exhibited functional biomimetic characteristics such as timing and rate codes, conventional coding strategies and neuronal avalanches, which are cascades of bursting activities with a power-law distribution. Our results suggest that small-world functional configurations are liable to underpin brain information processing at neuronal level.

Small-world networks in neuronal populations: a computational perspective.

Small-World Networks (SWNs) represent a fundamental model for the comprehension of many complex man-made and biological networks. In the central nervous system, SWN models have been shown to fit well both anatomical and functional maps at the macroscopic level. However, the functional microscopic level, where the nodes of a network are represented by single neurons, is still poorly understood. At this level, although recent evidences suggest that functional connection graphs exhibit small-world organization, it is not known whether and how these maps, potentially distributed in multiple brain regions, change across different conditions, such as spontaneous and stimulus-evoked activities. We addressed these questions by analyzing the data from simultaneous multi-array extracellular recordings in three brain regions of rats, diversely involved in somatosensory information processing: the ventropostero-lateral thalamic nuclei, the primary somatosensory cortex and the centro-median thalamic nuclei. From both spike and Local Field Potential (LFP) recordings, we estimated the functional connection graphs by using the Normalized Compression Similarity for spikes and the Phase Synchrony for LFPs. Then, by using graph-theoretical statistics, we characterized the functional topology both during spontaneous activity and sensory stimulation. Our main results show that: (i) spikes and LFPs show SWN organization during spontaneous activity; (ii) after stimulation onset, while substantial functional graph reconfigurations occur both in spike and LFPs, small-worldness is nonetheless preserved; (iii) the stimulus triggers a significant increase of inter-area LFP connections without modifying the topology of intra-area functional connections. Finally, investigating computationally the functional substrate that supports the observed phenomena, we found that (iv) the fundamental concept of cell assemblies, transient groups of activating neurons, can be described by small-world networks. Our results suggest that activity of neurons from multiple areas of the rat somatosensory system contributes to the integration of local computations arisen in distributed functional cell assemblies according to the principles of SWNs.

Antonio G. Zippo

Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology (IBFM),
Department of Biomedicine,
Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology (IBFM), Department of Biomedicine

national research council

A Simple Stimulatory Device for Evoking Point-like Tactile Stimuli: A Searchlight for LFP to Spike Transitions

Antonio G. Zippo

.css-o250i3{font-size:18px;font-family:Open Sans,sans-serif;line-height:21.6px;}Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology (IBFM),Department of Biomedicine,Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology (IBFM), Department of Biomedicine

national research council

A Simple Stimulatory Device for Evoking Point-like Tactile Stimuli: A Searchlight for LFP to Spike Transitions

Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology (IBFM),
Department of Biomedicine,
Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology (IBFM), Department of Biomedicine