y.k.y at lycos.com (yan king yin) wrote in message news:<72de81ae.0401231727.6564dfcf at posting.google.com>...
> Spike trains obtained from a single neuron is the
> result of dendritic integration of ~1000 to 100,000
> of other neurons' inputs. What kind of information can
> autocorrelation of a few spike trains reveal? Probably
> very little...
>> I guess your research will be more fruitful if you
> focus more on single neuron information processing.
> These are not single neuron spikes they are field potentials. I'm
using an in vitro model of epileptic activity by perfusing magnesium
free artificial CSF. What I would like to establish is whether there
is any degree of regularity to these trains of depolarizations
(~6-10/min) and see if this is altered when I co-perfuse drugs across
the cortex.
Autocorrelograms can reveal simple regularities in spike trains, e.g.
if many spikes are followed by another one at 30s then you'll get a
bump in the autocorrelogram. But since I've not found anything like
that what I need is a measure of higher-order patterns, though I'm not
sure even if I find one how to interpret that since it might be highly
non-intuitive.