Abstract
Local field potentials (LFP) have been the focus of many recent studies in systems neuroscience. However, the exact neural basis of these signals remains unclear. To address this question, we determined the relationship between LFP signals and another, much better understood, signature of neural activity: action potentials. Specifically, we focused on the relationship between the amplitude of stimulus-induced LFPs and the magnitude of spiking activity in visual cortex of non-human primates. Our trial-by-trial correlation analyses between these two components of extracellular signals in macaque visual cortex show that the spike rate is coupled to the LFP amplitude with a surprisingly long latency, typically 50 ms. Our analysis shows that the neural spike rate is a significant predictor of the LFP amplitude. This limits the functional interpretation of LFP signals beyond that based on spiking activities.
Highlights
The cerebral cortex encodes sensory information by the activity of neurons, a phenomenon extensively studied using extracellular recording in awake animals
For monkey H the local field potentials (LFP) peak occurs at 153 ± 18 (SD) ms while the spiking activity peak is at 74 ± 14 (SD) ms after stimulus onset when calculated for recording sites separately
We investigated the relationship between action potentials and LFPs in area MT of macaque visual cortex in search for a possible causal link and its directionality
Summary
The cerebral cortex encodes sensory information by the activity of neurons, a phenomenon extensively studied using extracellular recording in awake animals. This makes neural spikes a promising target for research on the neural bases of sensory and cognitive functions Another component of extracellular signals is local field potentials (LFP) that have attracted attention more recently in neuroscience and neuroengineering studies[6,7,8,9,10]. The power of LFPs at this frequency range has been found to increase with switching attention to the receptive field of the recorded site while decreasing at lower frequencies (
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