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Poster presentation: Background To test the importance of synchronous neuronal firing for information processing in the brain, one has to investigate if synchronous firing strength is correlated to the experimental subjects. This requires a tool that can compare the strength of the synchronous firing across different conditions, while at the same time it should correct for other features of neuronal firing such as spike rate modulation or the auto-structure of the spike trains that might co-occur with synchronous firing. Here we present the bi- and multivariate extension of previously developed method NeuroXidence [1,2], which allows for comparing the amount of synchronous firing between different conditions. ...
Background Synchronous neuronal firing has been discussed as a potential neuronal code. For testing first, if synchronous firing exists, second if it is modulated by the behaviour, and third if it is not by chance, a large set of tools has been developed. However, to test whether synchronous neuronal firing is really involved in information processing one needs a direct comparison of the amount of synchronous firing for different factors like experimental or behavioural conditions. To this end we present an extended version of a previously published method NeuroXidence [1], which tests, based on a bi- and multivariate test design, whether the amount of synchronous firing above the chance level is different for different factors.
Poster presentation: Functional connectivity of the brain describes the network of correlated activities of different brain areas. However, correlation does not imply causality and most synchronization measures do not distinguish causal and non-causal interactions among remote brain areas, i.e. determine the effective connectivity [1]. Identification of causal interactions in brain networks is fundamental to understanding the processing of information. Attempts at unveiling signs of functional or effective connectivity from non-invasive Magneto-/Electroencephalographic (M/EEG) recordings at the sensor level are hampered by volume conduction leading to correlated sensor signals without the presence of effective connectivity. Here, we make use of the transfer entropy (TE) concept to establish effective connectivity. The formalism of TE has been proposed as a rigorous quantification of the information flow among systems in interaction and is a natural generalization of mutual information [2]. In contrast to Granger causality, TE is a non-linear measure and not influenced by volume conduction. ...
Synchronous neuronal firing has been proposed as a potential neuronal code. To determine whether synchronous firing is really involved in different forms of information processing, one needs to directly compare the amount of synchronous firing due to various factors, such as different experimental or behavioral conditions. In order to address this issue, we present an extended version of the previously published method, NeuroXidence. The improved method incorporates bi- and multivariate testing to determine whether different factors result in synchronous firing occurring above the chance level. We demonstrate through the use of simulated data sets that bi- and multivariate NeuroXidence reliably and robustly detects joint-spike-events across different factors.
Understanding causal relationships, or effective connectivity, between parts of the brain is of utmost importance because a large part of the brain’s activity is thought to be internally generated and, hence, quantifying stimulus response relationships alone does not fully describe brain dynamics. Past efforts to determine effective connectivity mostly relied on model based approaches such as Granger causality or dynamic causal modeling. Transfer entropy (TE) is an alternative measure of effective connectivity based on information theory. TE does not require a model of the interaction and is inherently non-linear. We investigated the applicability of TE as a metric in a test for effective connectivity to electrophysiological data based on simulations and magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings in a simple motor task. In particular, we demonstrate that TE improved the detectability of effective connectivity for non-linear interactions, and for sensor level MEG signals where linear methods are hampered by signal-cross-talk due to volume conduction.
Background The synchrony hypothesis postulates that precise temporal synchronization of different pools of neurons conveys information that is not contained in their firing rates. The synchrony hypothesis had been supported by experimental findings demonstrating that millisecond precise synchrony of neuronal oscillations across well separated brain regions plays an essential role in visual perception and other higher cognitive tasks [1]. Albeit, more evidence is being accumulated in favour of its role as a binding mechanism of distributed neural responses, the physical and anatomical substrate for such a dynamic and precise synchrony, especially zero-lag even in the presence of non-negligible delays, remains unclear. Here we propose a simple network motif that naturally accounts for zero-lag synchronization for a wide range of temporal delays [3]. We demonstrate that zero-lag synchronization between two distant neurons or neural populations can be achieved by relaying the dynamics via a third mediating single neuron or population. Methods We simulated the dynamics of two Hodgkin-Huxley neurons that interact with each other via an intermediate third neuron. The synaptic coupling was mediated through alpha-functions. Individual temporal delays of the arrival of pre-synaptic potentials were modelled by a gamma distribution. The strength of the synchronization and the phase-difference between each individual pairs were derived by cross-correlation of the membrane potentials. Results In the regular spiking regime the two outer neurons consistently synchronize with zero phase lag irrespective of the initial conditions. This robust zero-lag synchronization naturally arises as a consequence of the relay and redistribution of the dynamics performed by the central neuron. This result is independent on whether the coupling is excitatory or inhibitory and can be maintained for arbitrarily long time delays (see Fig. 1). Conclusion We have presented a simple and extremely robust network motif able to account for the isochronous synchronization of distant neural elements in a natural way. As opposed to other possible mechanisms of neural synchronization, neither inhibitory coupling, gap junctions nor precise tuning of morphological parameters are required to obtain zero-lag synchronized neuronal oscillation.
Following the discovery of context-dependent synchronization of oscillatory neuronal responses in the visual system, the role of neural synchrony in cortical networks has been expanded to provide a general mechanism for the coordination of distributed neural activity patterns. In the current paper, we present an update of the status of this hypothesis through summarizing recent results from our laboratory that suggest important new insights regarding the mechanisms, function and relevance of this phenomenon. In the first part, we present recent results derived from animal experiments and mathematical simulations that provide novel explanations and mechanisms for zero and nero-zero phase lag synchronization. In the second part, we shall discuss the role of neural synchrony for expectancy during perceptual organization and its role in conscious experience. This will be followed by evidence that indicates that in addition to supporting conscious cognition, neural synchrony is abnormal in major brain disorders, such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders. We conclude this paper with suggestions for further research as well as with critical issues that need to be addressed in future studies.
Cortical neurons are typically driven by several thousand synapses. The precise spatiotemporal pattern formed by these inputs can modulate the response of a post-synaptic cell. In this work, we explore how the temporal structure of pre-synaptic inhibitory and excitatory inputs impact the post-synaptic firing of a conductance-based integrate and fire neuron. Both the excitatory and inhibitory input was modeled by renewal gamma processes with varying shape factors for modeling regular and temporally random Poisson activity. We demonstrate that the temporal structure of mutually independent inputs affects the post-synaptic firing, while the strength of the effect depends on the firing rates of both the excitatory and inhibitory inputs. In a second step, we explore the effect of temporal structure of mutually independent inputs on a simple version of Hebbian learning, i.e., hard bound spike-timing-dependent plasticity. We explore both the equilibrium weight distribution and the speed of the transient weight dynamics for different mutually independent gamma processes. We find that both the equilibrium distribution of the synaptic weights and the speed of synaptic changes are modulated by the temporal structure of the input. Finally, we highlight that the sensitivity of both the post-synaptic firing as well as the spike-timing-dependent plasticity on the auto-structure of the input of a neuron could be used to modulate the learning rate of synaptic modification.
As important as the intrinsic properties of an individual nervous cell stands the network of neurons in which it is embedded and by virtue of which it acquires great part of its responsiveness and functionality. In this study we have explored how the topological properties and conduction delays of several classes of neural networks affect the capacity of their constituent cells to establish well-defined temporal relations among firing of their action potentials. This ability of a population of neurons to produce and maintain a millisecond-precise coordinated firing (either evoked by external stimuli or internally generated) is central to neural codes exploiting precise spike timing for the representation and communication of information. Our results, based on extensive simulations of conductance-based type of neurons in an oscillatory regime, indicate that only certain topologies of networks allow for a coordinated firing at a local and long-range scale simultaneously. Besides network architecture, axonal conduction delays are also observed to be another important factor in the generation of coherent spiking. We report that such communication latencies not only set the phase difference between the oscillatory activity of remote neural populations but determine whether the interconnected cells can set in any coherent firing at all. In this context, we have also investigated how the balance between the network synchronizing effects and the dispersive drift caused by inhomogeneities in natural firing frequencies across neurons is resolved. Finally, we show that the observed roles of conduction delays and frequency dispersion are not particular to canonical networks but experimentally measured anatomical networks such as the macaque cortical network can display the same type of behavior.
NeuroXidence: reliable and efficient analysis of an excess or deficiency of joint-spike events
(2009)
Poster presentation: We present a non-parametric and computationally-efficient method named NeuroXidence (see http://www.NeuroXidence.com ) that detects coordinated firing within a group of two or more neurons and tests whether the observed level of coordinated firing is significantly different from that expected by chance. NeuroXidence [1] considers the full auto-structure of the data, including the changes in the rate responses and the history dependencies in the spiking activity. We demonstrate that NeuroXidence can identify epochs with significant spike synchronisation even if these coincide with strong and fast rate modulations. We also show, that the method accounts for trial-by-trial variability in the rate responses and their latencies, and that it can be applied to short data windows lasting only tens of milliseconds. Based on simulated data we compare the performance of NeuroXidence with the UE-method [2,3] and the cross-correlation analysis. An application of NeuroXidence to 42 single-units (SU) recorded in area 17 of an anesthetized cat revealed significant coincident events of high complexities, involving firing of up to 8 SUs simultaneously (5 ms window). The results were highly consistent with those obtained by traditional pair-wise measures based on cross-correlation: Neuronal synchrony was strongest in stimulation conditions in which the orientation of the sinusoidal grating matched the preferred orientation of most of the SUs included in the analysis, and was the weakest when the neurons were stimulated least optimally. Interestingly, events of higher complexities showed stronger stimulus-specific modulation than pair-wise interactions. The results suggest strong evidence for stimulus specific synchronous firing and, therefore, support the temporal coding hypothesis in visual cortex. ...