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Spike synchronization and firing rate in a population of motor cortical neurons in relation to movement direction and reaction time

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Abstract.

 We studied the dynamics of precise spike synchronization and rate modulation in a population of neurons recorded in monkey motor cortex during performance of a delayed multidirectional pointing task and determined their relation to behavior. We showed that at the population level neurons coherently synchronized their activity at various moments during the trial in relation to relevant task events. The comparison of the time course of the modulation of synchronous activity with that of the firing rate of the same neurons revealed a considerable difference. Indeed, when synchronous activity was highest, at the end of the preparatory period, firing rate was low, and, conversely, when the firing rate was highest, at movement onset, synchronous activity was almost absent. There was a clear tendency for synchrony to precede firing rate, suggesting that the coherent activation of cell assemblies may trigger the increase in firing rate in large groups of neurons, although it appeared that there was no simple parallel shifting in time of these two activity measures. Interestingly, there was a systematic relationship between the amount of significant synchronous activity within the population of neurons and movement direction at the end of the preparatory period. Furthermore, about 400 ms later, at movement onset, the mean firing rate of the same population was also significantly tuned to movement direction, having roughly the same preferred direction as synchronous activity. Finally, reaction time measurements revealed a directional preference of the monkey with, once again, the same preferred direction as synchronous activity and firing rate. These results lead us to speculate that synchronous activity and firing rate are cooperative neuronal processes and that the directional matching of our three measures – firing rate, synchronicity, and reaction times – might be an effect of behaviorally induced network cooperativity acquired during learning.

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Received: 16 January 2002 / Accepted in revised form: 26 November 2002 / Published online: 7 April 2003

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ID="*" Present address: Istituto di Fisiologia Umana, Università di Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43100 Parma, Italy

Correspondence to: A. Riehle (e-mail: ariehle@lnf.cnrs-mrs.fr, Tel.: +33-491-164329, Fax: +33-491-774969)

Acknowledgements. We wish to thank Sonja Grün, Markus Diesmann, and Bill MacKay for many helpful and exciting discussions and one anonymous referee for her/his helpful comments. Special thanks go to Annette Bastian for her help in data collection, Michèle Coulmance for writing data acquisition and parts of data analysis software, and Marc Martin for animal welfare. This research was supported in part by the CNRS, GIS (Sciences de la Cognition), and ACI Cognitique (Invariants and Variability). FG was supported by the French government (MENRT).

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Grammont, F., Riehle, A. Spike synchronization and firing rate in a population of motor cortical neurons in relation to movement direction and reaction time. Biol. Cybern. 88, 360–373 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-002-0385-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-002-0385-3

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