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Sensitivity to perturbations in vivo implies high noise and suggests rate coding in cortex

Nature volume 466, pages 123–127 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

It is well known that neural activity exhibits variability, in the sense that identical sensory stimuli produce different responses1,2,3, but it has been difficult to determine what this variability means. Is it noise, or does it carry important information—about, for example, the internal state of the organism? Here we address this issue from the bottom up, by asking whether small perturbations to activity in cortical networks are amplified. Based on in vivo whole-cell patch-clamp recordings in rat barrel cortex, we find that a perturbation consisting of a single extra spike in one neuron produces approximately 28 additional spikes in its postsynaptic targets. We also show, using simultaneous intra- and extracellular recordings, that a single spike in a neuron produces a detectable increase in firing rate in the local network. Theoretical analysis indicates that this amplification leads to intrinsic, stimulus-independent variations in membrane potential of the order of ±2.2–4.5 mV—variations that are pure noise, and so carry no information at all. Therefore, for the brain to perform reliable computations, it must either use a rate code, or generate very large, fast depolarizing events, such as those proposed by the theory of synfire chains4,5. However, in our in vivo recordings, we found that such events were very rare. Our findings are thus consistent with the idea that cortex is likely to use primarily a rate code.

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Figure 1: The effect of an extra spike on a neuronal network.
Figure 2: Small perturbations affect spiking probability in vivo.
Figure 3: Determining the sensitivity of neurons to small perturbations in vivo.
Figure 4: The effect of one extra spike on network activity in vivo.
Figure 5: Precisely timed events are rare.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Dayan for discussions, I. van Welie and P. Dayan for comments on the manuscript, and H. Cuntz for comments on the spike detection algorithm. P.E.L. was supported by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and US National Institute of Mental Health grant R01 MH62447. M.L., A.R., L.B. and M.H. were supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research and Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK,

    Michael London, Arnd Roth, Lisa Beeren & Michael Häusser

  2. Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK,

    Peter E. Latham

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  1. Michael London
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Correspondence to Peter E. Latham.

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London, M., Roth, A., Beeren, L. et al. Sensitivity to perturbations in vivo implies high noise and suggests rate coding in cortex. Nature 466, 123–127 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09086

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