Balanced amplification: a new mechanism of selective amplification of neural activity patterns.

ABSTRACT: In cerebral cortex, ongoing activity absent a stimulus can resemble stimulus-driven activity in size and structure. In particular, spontaneous activity in cat primary visual cortex (V1) has structure significantly correlated with evoked responses to oriented stimuli. This suggests that, from unstructured input, cortical circuits selectively amplify specific activity patterns. Current understanding of selective amplification involves elongation of a neural assembly's lifetime by mutual excitation among its neurons. We introduce a new mechanism for selective amplification without elongation of lifetime: "balanced amplification." Strong balanced amplification arises when feedback inhibition stabilizes strong recurrent excitation, a pattern likely to be typical of cortex. Thus, balanced amplif

SUBMITTER: Murphy BK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2667957 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature