IUBio

Network level of brain

Didier A. Depireux didier at Glue.umd.edu
Fri May 7 08:54:37 EST 1999


Gary Jasdzewski (gary at purdue.edu) wrote:
: Central Nervous System
:             |
:        Systems
:             |
:       Networks
:             |
:       Neurons
:             |
:      Synapses
:             |
:       Molecules


I am not sure it's quite what you are asking about, but a frustration for
anyone who is trying to do modeling is the impossiblity at this point to
record from 100s of neighboring neurons in cortex (and I do know it's done
in hippocampus and cerebellum, but these structures are quite different).
So you can easily record from a few neurons (maybe 4-5, in the vicinity of
a multiple-electrode system), or from millions of neurons by doing evoked
potentials and imaging, but there's no techinque that allows you to record
from, say, all the neurons within a single cortical column. There's a
quantum jump there that's very frustrating.

A cortical column is thought to be, in some circles, the basic
computational unit in the brain. I, for one, would like to see whether at
the level of a cortical column, there is less noise (in the sense of
reliability, for instance) in the activity.

Some day maybe.

						Didier

--
Didier A Depireux                              didier at isr.umd.edu
Neural Systems Lab                 http://www.isr.umd.edu/~didier
Institute for Systems Research          Phone: 301-405-6557 (off)
University of Maryland                                -6596 (lab)
College Park MD 20742 USA                     Fax: 1-301-314-9920



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