title: Precise firing events are conserved across neurons.
abstract: Sensory neurons can respond to dynamic stimuli with temporally precise firing events. In the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus, we found previously that when a flickering visual stimulus was repeated, individual cells fired action potentials at the same time in every trial to within 1 msec. We now show that these precise firing events are also reproducible across cells of the same class. Therefore, the mechanisms for producing precise timing must be conserved within a cell class. Our results further suggest that cortical neurons would require only a few generic processing mechanisms to extract the fine temporal information available in their LGN inputs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Pamela
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Reinagel
authors.forename: R Clay
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Reid
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D002415:Cats; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D005829:Geniculate Bodies / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000145:classification / Q000502:physiology*; D016011:Normal Distribution; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013997:Time Factors; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology