Phase-Locking in a Pair of Electrically Coupled Fast-Spiking Interneurons with Dendritic Structure

Synchronization of oscillatory activity in neuronal networks arises in many areas of neuroscience and 4 has been linked to various behavioral functions. There is little doubt that the oscillatory behavior of 5 these networks plays a major role in generating motor patterns of repetitive activity such as locomotion, 6 feeding, and breathing [35, 39, 47]. In the mammalian cortex, oscillatory behavior arises as a result of 7 the synchronized electrical activity of large populations of cortical neurons. This oscillatory behavior is 8 apparent in electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings and can occur in different frequency bands and in 9 different areas of the cortex [4]. Oscillations within these different frequency bands have been hypoth10 esized to correspond with different behavioral functions. For example, synchronized gamma-frequency 11 (30-80Hz) oscillations in the mammalian sensory cortex have been hypothesized to be important in 12 sensory information processing, e.g. in the olfactory system [19] and the visual system [15], in motor 13 programming [26], and associative learning [25]. However, directly linking these cortical oscillations to 14 precise functional roles is a difficult task and more work has to be done before this can occur. Therefore, 15 rather than directly addressing the issue of the functional role of these oscillations, one can first address 16 the question of what are the biophysical mechanisms that underly the observed synchronous electrical 17 activity? A deep understanding of these mechanisms can allow one to extract the functional role of the 18