Innovative method to measure action potentials between cells.

Parameter extraction and classification of three cortical neuron types reveals two distinct adaptation mechanisms. Cortical information processing originates from the exchange of action potentials between many cell types. In order to capture the essence of these interactions it is of critical importance to build mathematical models that reflect the characteristic features of spike generation in individual neurons. Here, the groups Profs. Carl C.H. Petersen (LSENS - Sensory Processing Laboratory ) and Wulfram Gerstner (LCN1 - Computational Neuroscience Laboratory ) propose a framework to automatically extract such features from current-clamp experiments, in particular the passive properties of a neuron (i.e. membrane time constant, reversal potential and capacitance), the spike-triggered adaptation currents, as well as the dynamics of the action potential threshold. The stochastic model that results from their maximum likelihood approach accurately predicts the spike times, the subthreshold voltage, the firing patterns, and the type of frequency-current curve.