Diverse coupling of neurons to populations in sensory cortex

Diverse coupling of neurons to populations in sensory cortex

Michael Okun, University College London

摘要

这篇文章研究的是单个个体与群体之间的关系。因为大量研究表明，虽然个体神经元活动明显不同，但是神经元群体活动却存在于低维流形中，暗示着大量个体神经元是“听话”者。但是，如何“听话”，或着说服从指挥，目前还不清楚其中的机制。
论文作者把与群体存在强“coupling”的个体称为“唱诗班的歌手”（因为合唱表现出的同步或有规律的配合），而将与群体存在弱“coupling”的个体称为“独唱者”。
首先，看下图a,b，是本文的关键之一：1）在个体层面，population coupling是各不相同的；2）population coupling是不变的，不管是自发状态还是诱发状态。（当然，它可能每天不一样，就如ref30那样，通过脑机接口训练后，spike-LFP和spike-spike都增强了，间接说明了个体神经元的population coupling的增强）

1. Population coupling is largely independent of sensory preferences
2. it is a fixed cellular attribute, invariant to stimulus conditions
3. Neurons with high population coupling are more strongly affected by non-sensory behavioural variables such as motor intention.
4. Population coupling reflects a causal relationship, predicting the response of a neuron to optogeneticallydriven increases in local activity.
5. population coupling indicates synaptic connectivity
6. the population coupling of a neuron, measured in vivo, predicted subsequent in vitro estimates of the number of synapses received from itsneighbours
7. population coupling provides a compact summary of population activity
8. knowledge of the population couplings of n neurons predicts a substantial portion of their n2 pairwise correlations
   以上八点是population coupling的重要属性。
   另外还有一些特性：
9. Narrow-spiking cells tended to have higher population coupling than wide-spiking cells
10. Strongly coupled neurons were more likely to exhibit bursting and to have a lower firing rate. However, even cells with similar firing rate and bursting dynamics could show great variation in coupling
11. Both strongly and weakly coupled cells could respond to natural movies, showing reliable
    modulation by visual stimuli.意思就是说虽然每个单体的population coupling保持稳定，但是单体对于不同刺激的反应（respond）是有显著改变的。Strongly coupled cells exhibited a larger increase in mean firing rate during visual stimulation。注意是increase，而不是较大的平均发放活动。

本文通过光基因技术，下图3.f和g，suggest that more strongly coupled neurons might receive stronger synaptic input from neighbouring neurons. 说明population coupling 反应的是单个神经元接受突触刺激的程度，是一种可塑性的表现。

通过在体双光子实验，下图4.d和f，进一步说明population coupling反应的单体神经元接收刺激的程度，而不是单体神经元firing的程度。通过图4b,c进一步说明pc是固有属性和空间位置无关。