Microsecond-scale timing precision in rodent trigeminal primary afferents

Communication in the nervous system occurs by spikes: the timing precision with which spikes are fired is a fundamental limit on neural information processing. In sensory systems, spike-timing precision is constrained by first-order neurons. We found that spike-timing precision of trigeminal primary...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Bale, Michael R., Campagner, Dario, Erskine, Andrew, Petersen, Rasmus S.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2015
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/309154
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/309154
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Neural coding
Trigeminal ganglion
Vibrissa
Whisker
Descripción
Sumario:Communication in the nervous system occurs by spikes: the timing precision with which spikes are fired is a fundamental limit on neural information processing. In sensory systems, spike-timing precision is constrained by first-order neurons. We found that spike-timing precision of trigeminal primary afferents in rats and mice is limited both by stimulus speed and by electrophysiological sampling rate. High-speed video of behaving mice revealed whisker velocities of at least 17,000°/s, so we delivered an ultrafast “ping” (>50,000°/s) to single whiskers and sampled primary afferent activity at 500 kHz. Median spike jitter was 17.4 μs; 29% of neurons had spike jitter < 10 μs. These results indicate that the input stage of the trigeminal pathway has extraordinary spike-timing precision and very high potential information capacity. This timing precision ranks among the highest in biology.