Charge transfer across the membrane of all structures in brain matter such as neurons, glial cells, etc. induces the so-called extracellular sinks and sources that, in turn, give rise to an extracellular field, i.e., a spatial gradient of the extracellular voltage (V e ) measured in comparison to a distant reference signal. The physics governing such events are described by Maxwell’s equations. In their simplest form, Maxwell’s equations dictate that V e depends on the transmembrane current amplitude, the impedance of the extracellular medium, and the distance between the location of the ionic flux and the recording (see also entries “Local Field Potentials (LFP)” and “Local Field Potential, Methods of Recording” and (Koch 1999)). V e signals resulting from the activity of the entire cell populations can therefore be recorded via standard recording techniques and have been used for decades to monitor electric processing in the brain (Buzsaki 2002).
From in vivo electrophysiology...
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Holscher C, Anwyl R, Rowan MJ (1997) Stimulation on the positive phase of hippocampal theta rhythm induces long-term potentiation that can be depotentiated by stimulation on the negative phase in area CA1 in vivo. J Neurosci 17(16):6470–6477
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Acknowledgments
The author thanks Adam Shai and Michael Hawrylycz for comments and suggestions as well as the Allen Institute for Brain Science founders, P. G. Allen and J. Allen, for their support.
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Anastassiou, C.A. (2014). Local Field Potential, Ephaptic Interactions. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_550-1
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