Cortical neural populations can guide behavior by integrating inputs linearly, independent of synchrony.

ABSTRACT: Neurons are sensitive to the relative timing of inputs, both because several inputs must coincide to reach spike threshold and because active dendritic mechanisms can amplify synchronous inputs. To determine if input synchrony can influence behavior, we trained mice to report activation of excitatory neurons in visual cortex using channelrhodopsin-2. We used light pulses that varied in duration from a few milliseconds to 100 ms and measured neuronal responses and animals' detection ability. We found detection performance was well predicted by the total amount of light delivered. Short pulses provided no behavioral advantage, even when they concentrated evoked spikes into an interval a few milliseconds long. Arranging pulses into trains of varying frequency from beta to gamma also produced

SUBMITTER: Histed MH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3890892 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature