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Analysis of mEPSP driven spontaneous spiking of neurons in culture
Dezhe Z. Jin and H. Sebastian Seung
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cultured neurons often spontaneously fire action potentials in absence
of external stimuli. Recent experiments in cultured rat hippocampal
neurons have shown that blocking synaptic transmission blocks the
spontaneous firing of the neurons[1]. We propose that the neuron's
spontaneous spiking is driven by miniature EPSPs (mEPSPs). Our
analysis is constrained by known physiological properties of synaptic
transmission in rat hippocampal neurons. It is shown that the rate of
the spontaneous firing is very sensitive to the frequency and average
peak amplitude of the mEPSPs. Moreover, the time interval between
spontaneous activation of the neuron satisfies a Poisson distribution
when the mEPSP rate is small. Experiments are proposed for
quantitatively testing our theory.
[1] Bacci et. al. Eur J Neurosci, 11(2):389-97, Feb 1999.