Neural spike train analysis is an important task in computational neuroscience which aims to understand neural mechanisms and gain insights into neural circuits. With the advancement of multielectrode recording and imaging technologies, it has become increasingly demanding to develop statistical tools for analyzing large neuronal ensemble spike activity. Here we present a tutorial overview of B...

1. For cockroach skeletal muscle, 2 mM caffeine considerably lowered the mechanical threshold without affecting the membrane potential. Constractures were induced by 8-10 mM caffeine. 2. In rat ileal smooth muscle, 1-10 mM caffeine inhibited spontaneous contractile behaviour, abolished spike activity and reduced KCl-induced contracture tension. 3. Enhanced spike activity associated with the KCl...

We used a model of spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) based on calcium signaling to test the effects of correlated inputs on synaptic weight distributions. Gilson and Fukai (2011) used amplitudes for the STDP curve that depended on synaptic strength and demonstrated the emergence of stable bimodal weight distributions. Those sets of synapses with correlated inputs were more strongly poten...

Action potentials are usually considered as the smallest unit of neuronal information conveyed by presynaptic neurons to their postsynaptic target. Thus, neuronal signaling in brain circuits is all-or-none or digital. However, recent studies indicate that subthreshold analog variation in presynaptic membrane potential modulates spike-evoked transmission. The informational content of each presyn...

We investigated the mechanisms that contribute to spontaneous regular bursting in adult Purkinje neurons in acutely prepared cerebellar slices. Bursts consisted of 3-20 spikes and showed a stereotypic waveform. Each burst developed with an increase in firing rate and was terminated by a more rapid increase in firing rate and a decrease in spike height. Whole-cell current-clamp recordings showed...

Subthalamic nucleus neurons exhibit reverse spike-frequency adaptation. This occurs only at firing rates of 20-50 spikes/s and higher. Over this same frequency range, there is an increase in the steady-state frequency-intensity (F-I) curve's slope (the secondary range). Specific blockade of high-voltage activated calcium currents reduced the F-I curve slope and reverse adaptation. Blockade of c...

Vogelstein JT, Packer AM, Machado TA, Sippy T, Babadi B, Yuste R, Paninski L. Fast nonnegative deconvolution for spike train inference from population calcium imaging. J Neurophysiol 104: 3691–3704, 2010. First published June 16, 2010; doi:10.1152/jn.01073.2009. Fluorescent calcium indicators are becoming increasingly popular as a means for observing the spiking activity of large neuronal popul...

In vivo neocortical neurons fire apparently random trains of action potentials in response to sensory stimuli. Does this randomness represent a signal or noise around a mean firing rate? Here we use the timing of action potential trains recorded in vivo to explore the dendritic consequences of physiological patterns of action potential firing in neocortical pyramidal neurons in vitro. We find t...

The modification of first-spike latencies by low-threshold and inactivating K+ currents (IA) have important implications in neuronal coding and synaptic integration. To date, cells in which first-spike latency characteristics have been analyzed have shown that increased hyperpolarization results in longer first-spike latencies, producing a monotonic relationship between first-spike latency and ...