title: Reproducing bursting interspike interval statistics of the gustatory cortex.
abstract: Cortical neurons in vivo generate highly irregular spike sequences. Recently, it was experimentally found that the local variation of interspike intervals, LV, is nearly constant for every spike sequence for the same neurons. On the contrary, the coefficient of variation, CV, varies over different spike sequences. Here, we first show that these characteristic features are also applicable in bursting spike sequences that are obtained from the rat gustatory cortex. Next, we show that the conventional leaky integrate-and-fire model does not fully account for reproducing these statistical features in data of real bursting spike sequences. We resolve this difficulty by proposing an alternative neuron model which is a reduction of the bursting neuron model involving the persistent sodium current. Our study implies that (1) the characteristic features of CV and LV are the results of the endogenous bursting and (2) the bursting behavior in the gustatory cortex is caused mainly by the persistent sodium current.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan. kantaro@sat.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
authors.forename: Kantaro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fujiwara
authors.forename: Hiroki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fujiwara
authors.forename: Minoru
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tsukada
authors.forename: Kazuyuki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Aihara
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D008959:Models, Neurological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans; D011984:Sensory Receptor Cells / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D012964:Sodium / Q000378:metabolism; D049490:Systems Biology; D013649:Taste; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D012964:Sodium