Exploration of the cytoplasm of the giant esophageal cell of Ascaris with a recording microelectrode shows the existence of shallow spaces where the microelectrode tip becomes extracellular in spite of being in the interior of the cell. When the microelectrode penetrates into these spaces from the cytoplasm, the resting potential shifts to a different level or entirely disappears. At the same t...

The sustained activity seen in the oculomotor inteIntegrating with Action Potentials grator, like that shown in the figure, provides a representation of the running integral of the burst neuron inputs. Similar types of sustained activity have been seen in a When we add a long list of numbers in our heads, we number of brain areas in monkeys doing tasks that remust keep track of the running tota...

Similar types of sustained activity have been seen in a When we add a long list of numbers in our heads, we number of brain areas in monkeys doing tasks that remust keep track of the running total while performing quire short-term memory of transient stimuli (Fuster, the individual summations. Neural circuits integrating 1995). They have been interpreted in this context as a information must si...

Most action potentials in the nervous system take on the form of strong, rapid, and brief voltage deflections known as spikes, in stark contrast to other action potentials, such as in the heart, that are characterized by broad voltage plateaus. We derive the shape of the neuronal action potential from first principles, by postulating that action potential generation is strongly constrained by t...

Most computational engineering based loosely on biology uses continuous variables to represent neural activity. Yet most neurons communicate with action potentials. The engineering view is equivalent to using a rate-code for representing information and for computing. An increasing number of examples are being discovered in which biology may not be using rate codes. Information can be represent...