Local Cortical Circuits: An Electrophysiological Study

1 Introduction.- 2 Techniques.- 2.1 Single-Unit Recording.- 2.2 Multi-Unit Analysis.- 2.3 Limitations of Our Recordings Technique.- 2.4 Analysis of Spike Trains by Renewal Density.- 3 The Spontaneous Firing of Cortical Neurons.- 3.1 Patterns of Firing.- 3.2 Neural Mechanisms.- 3.3 Membrane Potential, Threshold, and Excitability.- 3.4 Sources of Excitatory Inputs.- 4 Interactions Between Pairs of Cells.- 4.1 Cross-Renewal Density.- 4.2 Types of Cross Renewal Densities.- 4.3 Synaptic Relations Between Adjacent Neurons.- 4.4 Sources of Excitation Within Groups of Neurons.- 4.5 Is the Cortical Network Randomly Connected?.- 5 Responses to Sound.- 5.1 Stating the Problem.- 5.2 Responses of Groups of Neurons to Sound.- 5.3 Stability of the Cortical Network.- 5.4 Is the Auditory Cortex a Purely Sensory Station?.- 6 Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Activity.- 6.1 Compound Renewal Densities.- 6.2 How Three Cells Interact.- 7 Transmission of Information by Coincidence.- 7.1 The Single Neuron as a Coincidence Detector.- 7.2 Existence of Chains of Neuronal Sets with Appropriate Connections.- 7.3 Some Properties of Synfire Chains.- 8 Organization of Generators of the ECoG.- 8.1 The Generation of the ECoG.- 8.2 Population Statistics and ECoG.- 8.3 Experimental Results.- 9 Information Codes for Higher Brain Function.- 9.1 Hypotheses.- 9.2 Experimental Evidence.- 10 Conclusion.- References.