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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 100/3/1576    most recent 01282.2007v3 01282.2007v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Google Scholar Articles by Engel, T. A. Articles by Erchova, I. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Engel, T. A. Articles by Erchova, I.

Subthreshold Membrane-Potential Resonances Shape Spike-Train Patterns in the Entorhinal Cortex

¹Department of Physics and ²Department of Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; ³Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Berlin, Germany; and ⁴Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Submitted 23 November 2007; accepted in final form 25 April 2008

Many neurons exhibit subthreshold membrane-potential resonances, such that the largest voltage responses occur at preferred stimulation frequencies. Because subthreshold resonances are known to influence the rhythmic activity at the network level, it is vital to understand how they affect spike generation on the single-cell level. We therefore investigated both resonant and nonresonant neurons of rat entorhinal cortex. A minimal resonate-and-fire type model based on measured physiological parameters captures fundamental properties of neuronal firing statistics surprisingly well and helps to shed light on the mechanisms that shape spike patterns: 1) subthreshold resonance together with a spike-induced reset of subthreshold oscillations leads to spike clustering and 2) spike-induced dynamics influence the fine structure of interspike interval (ISI) distributions and are responsible for ISI correlations appearing at higher firing rates (3 Hz). Both mechanisms are likely to account for the specific discharge characteristics of various cell types.