title: Cell Assembly Dynamics of Sparsely-Connected Inhibitory Networks: A Simple Model for the Collective Activity of Striatal Projection Neurons.
abstract: Striatal projection neurons form a sparsely-connected inhibitory network, and this arrangement may be essential for the appropriate temporal organization of behavior. Here we show that a simplified, sparse inhibitory network of Leaky-Integrate-and-Fire neurons can reproduce some key features of striatal population activity, as observed in brain slices. In particular we develop a new metric to determine the conditions under which sparse inhibitory networks form anti-correlated cell assemblies with time-varying activity of individual cells. We find that under these conditions the network displays an input-specific sequence of cell assembly switching, that effectively discriminates similar inputs. Our results support the proposal that GABAergic connections between striatal projection neurons allow stimulus-selective, temporally-extended sequential activation of cell assemblies. Furthermore, we help to show how altered intrastriatal GABAergic signaling may produce aberrant network-level information processing in disorders such as Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.
authors.affiliation: CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.|Aix-Marseille Université, Inserm, INMED UMR 901 and Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes UMR 1106, Marseille, France.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Angulo-Garcia
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America.
authors.forename: Joshua D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Berke
authors.affiliation: CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.|Aix-Marseille Université, Inserm, INMED UMR 901 and Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes UMR 1106, Marseille, France.|Aix-Marseille Université, Université de Toulon, CNRS, CPT, UMR 7332, Marseille, France.|INFN Sez. Firenze, via Sansone, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Torcini
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000502:physiology*; D051379:Mice; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*