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The Journal of Neuroscience, May 15, 2002, 22(10):4142-4152
The Spatial Dimensions of Electrically Coupled Networks of
Interneurons in the Neocortex
Yael
Amitai1, 2,
Jay R.
Gibson1,
Michael
Beierlein1,
Saundra L.
Patrick1,
Alice M.
Ho1,
Barry W.
Connors1, and
David
Golomb2
1 Department of Neuroscience, Brown University,
Providence, Rhode Island 02912, and 2 Department of
Physiology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Faculty of Health
Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel
Inhibitory interneurons of the neocortex are electrically
coupled to cells of the same type through gap junctions. We studied the
spatial organization of two types of interneurons in the rat somatosensory cortex: fast-spiking (FS) parvalbumin-immunoreactive (PV+) cells, and low threshold-spiking (LTS)
somatostatin-immunoreactive (SS+) cells. Paired recordings in layer 4 demonstrated that both the probability of coupling and the coupling
coefficient drop steeply with intersomatic distance, reaching zero
beyond 200 µm. The dendritic arbors of FS and LTS cells were
reconstructed from electrophysiologically characterized,
biocytin-filled cells; the two cell types had only minor differences in
the number and span of their dendrites. However, there was a markedly
higher density of PV+ cells than SS+ cells. PV+ cells were densest in
layer 4, while SS+ cell density peaked in the subgranular layers. From these data we estimate that there is measurable electrical coupling (directly or indirectly via intermediary cells) between each
interneuron and 20-50 others. The large number of electrical synapses
implies that each interneuron participates in a large, continuous
syncytium. To evaluate the functional significance of these findings,
we examined several simple architectures of coupled networks
analytically. We present a mathematical method to estimate the average
summated coupling conductance that each cell receives from all of its
neighbors, and the average leak conductance of individual cells, and we
suggest that these have the same order of magnitude. These quantitative results have important implications for the effects of electrical coupling on the dynamic behavior of interneuron networks.
Key words:
FS cells; LTS cells; inhibitory interneurons; gap
junctions; dendritic fields; coupling coefficient; coupling
conductance; network architecture
Copyright © 2002 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/02/22104142-11$05.00/0
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