George Gerstein (Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, USA) | Further searches for Synfire Chains

Abstract

The “Synfire Chain model” (Abeles 1981) is an interesting suggestion for formation of functional neuronal assemblies. The model has received much theoretical attention, and turns out to have many of the computational properties appropriate for a real nervous system. Highly parallel recordings of spike activity from many neurons are just becoming technically possible and offer the opportunity to search for Synfire Chains in the real brain. Using large scale simulations with embedded Synfire Chains we will examine four computations that together yield a convincing signature of synfire chains if they are present. Unfortunately, application to several sets of real recordings has so far been negative.