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Spatial and temporal correlations of spike trains in frog retinal ganglion cells

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Abstract

For a neuron, firing activity can be in synchrony with that of others, which results in spatial correlation; on the other hand, spike events within each individual spike train may also correlate with each other, which results in temporal correlation. In order to investigate the relationship between these two phenomena, population neurons’ activities of frog retinal ganglion cells in response to binary pseudo-random checker-board flickering were recorded via a multi-electrode recording system. The spatial correlation index (SCI) and temporal correlation index (TCI) were calculated for the investigated neurons. Statistical results showed that, for a single neuron, the SCI and TCI values were highly related—a neuron with a high SCI value generally had a high TCI value, and these two indices were both associated with burst activities in spike train of the investigated neuron. These results may suggest that spatial and temporal correlations of single neuron’s spiking activities could be mutually modulated; and that burst activities could play a role in the modulation. We also applied models to test the contribution of spatial and temporal correlations for visual information processing. We show that a model considering spatial and temporal correlations could predict spikes more accurately than a model does not include any correlation.

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Abbreviations

ISI:

inter-spike-intervals

RGC:

retinal ganglion cell

MEA:

multi-electrode array

SCI:

spatial correlation index

STA:

Spike-triggered averaged

TCI:

temporal correlation index

LGN:

lateral geniculate nucleus

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mr. Xin-Wei Gong for helpful discussions. This work was supported by the grants from the State Key Basic Research and Development Plan (No.2005CB724301) and National Foundation of Natural Science of China (No.30670519).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong-Chuan Road, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Wen-Zhong Liu, Wei Jing, Hao Li, Hai-Qing Gong & Pei-Ji Liang

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  1. Wen-Zhong Liu
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  2. Wei Jing
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  3. Hao Li
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Correspondence to Pei-Ji Liang.

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Liu, WZ., Jing, W., Li, H. et al. Spatial and temporal correlations of spike trains in frog retinal ganglion cells. J Comput Neurosci 30, 543–553 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-010-0277-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-010-0277-9

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