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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Corrected Acknowledgments All Versions of this Article: 99/3/1333    most recent 00772.2007v1 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 Muresan, R. C. Articles by Nikolic, D. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Muresan, R. C. Articles by Nikolic, D.

The Oscillation Score: An Efficient Method for Estimating Oscillation Strength in Neuronal Activity

Raul C. Murean^1,2,3, Ovidiu F. Jurju^1,2,3, Vasile V. Moca^1,2,3, Wolf Singer^1,2 and Danko Nikoli^1,2

¹Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies; ²Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; and ³Center for Cognitive and Neuronal Studies, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Submitted 9 July 2007; accepted in final form 22 December 2007

We present a method that estimates the strength of neuronal oscillations at the cellular level, relying on autocorrelation histograms computed on spike trains. The method delivers a number, termed oscillation score, that estimates the degree to which a neuron is oscillating in a given frequency band. Moreover, it can also reliably identify the oscillation frequency and strength in the given band, independently of the oscillation in other frequency bands, and thus it can handle superimposed oscillations on multiple scales (theta, alpha, beta, gamma, etc.). The method is relatively simple and fast. It can cope with a low number of spikes, converging exponentially fast with the number of spikes, to a stable estimation of the oscillation strength. It thus lends itself to the analysis of spike-sorted single-unit activity from electrophysiological recordings. We show that the method performs well on experimental data recorded from cat visual cortex and also compares favorably to other methods. In addition, we provide a measure, termed confidence score, that determines the stability of the oscillation score estimate over trials.