Het brein in beeld - Single-cell Recording

4 important questions on Het brein in beeld - Single-cell Recording

How are single-cell recordings obtained?

The action potential is directly measured in the method of single-cell (and multi-unit) recordings.

They can be obtained by implanting a very small electrode either into the neuron itself (intracellular recordings) or outside the membrane (extracellular recordings) and counting the number of times that an action potential is produced in response to a given stimulus.   = invasive method

What is multi-cell (multi-unit) recordings?

An electrode may pick up on activity from multiple nearby neurons. Special algorithms can then be applied to separate the combined signal into individual contributions from different neurons.

What are the three different types of representation that may be found at the neural level?

1. Local representation: all information about a stimulus is carried in one of the neurons (grandmother cell)

2. Fully distributed representation: all information in about a stimulus is carried in all the neurons of a given population

3. Sparse distributed representation: a small proportion of the neurons carry information about a stimulus.
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What are the two types of representing information about stimuli on a neural level?

1. Rate coding: stimulus information is associated with an increase in the rate of neural firing

2. Temporal coding: stimulus information is associated with greater synchronization of firing across different neurons

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