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)
- Population coupling is largely independent of sensory preferences
- it is a fixed cellular attribute, invariant to stimulus conditions
- Neurons with high population coupling are more strongly affected by non-sensory behavioural variables such as motor intention.
- Population coupling reflects a causal relationship, predicting the response of a neuron to optogeneticallydriven increases in local activity.
- population coupling indicates synaptic connectivity
- the population coupling of a neuron, measured in vivo, predicted subsequent in vitro estimates of the number of synapses received from itsneighbours
- population coupling provides a compact summary of population activity
- 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: - Narrow-spiking cells tended to have higher population coupling than wide-spiking cells
- 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
- 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。