Cell assemblies of the superficial cortex.
The auditory cortex encodes information about sounds through the combined activity of large numbers of neurons, but the way this population activity is organized has not been clear. In this issue of Neuron, Bathellier et al. (2012) show that firing in the superficial layers of auditory cortex is organized into a small number of attractor-like neuronal assemblies, whose responses can predict an animal's sound discrimination performance.
Institute of Neurology, Department of Neuroscience, Physiology, and Pharmacology, 21 University Street, University College London, London WC1E 6DE, UK. kenneth.harris@ucl.ac.uk
Kenneth D
KD
Harris