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The Journal of Neuroscience, March 21, 2007, 27(12):3274-3284; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4937-06.2007

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
The Impact of Input Fluctuations on the Frequency–Current Relationships of Layer 5 Pyramidal Neurons in the Rat Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Maura Arsiero,¹ Hans-Rudolf Lüscher,¹ Brian Nils Lundstrom,² and Michele Giugliano^1,3

¹Institute of Physiology, University of Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland, ²Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, and ³Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry, Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Michele Giugliano, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, School of Life Sciences Brain Mind Institute Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry, Station 15, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Email: michele.giugliano{at}epfl.ch

The role of irregular cortical firing in neuronal computation is still debated, and it is unclear how signals carried by fluctuating synaptic potentials are decoded by downstream neurons. We examined in vitro frequency versus current (f–I) relationships of layer 5 (L5) pyramidal cells of the rat medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) using fluctuating stimuli. Studies in the somatosensory cortex show that L5 neurons become insensitive to input fluctuations as input mean increases and that their f–I response becomes linear. In contrast, our results show that mPFC L5 pyramidal neurons retain an increased sensitivity to input fluctuations, whereas their sensitivity to the input mean diminishes to near zero. This implies that the discharge properties of L5 mPFC neurons are well suited to encode input fluctuations rather than input mean in their firing rates, with important consequences for information processing and stability of persistent activity at the network level.

Key words: pyramidal neuron; noise; variance; frequency–current relationship; slow inactivation; prefrontal cortex; rats

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Received Nov. 14, 2006; revised Jan. 23, 2007; accepted Feb. 6, 2007.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Michele Giugliano, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, School of Life Sciences Brain Mind Institute Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry, Station 15, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Email: michele.giugliano{at}epfl.ch

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