Neocortical inhibitory interneuron subtypes are differentially attuned to synchrony- and rate-coded information

Luke Y. Prince, Matthew M. Tran, Dorian Grey, Lydia Saad, Helen Chasiotis, Jeehyun Kwag, Michael M. Kohl, Blake A. Richards

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    3 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Neurons can carry information with both the synchrony and rate of their spikes. However, it is unknown whether distinct subtypes of neurons are more sensitive to information carried by synchrony versus rate, or vice versa. Here, we address this question using patterned optical stimulation in slices of somatosensory cortex from mouse lines labelling fast-spiking (FS) and regular-spiking (RS) interneurons. We used optical stimulation in layer 2/3 to encode a 1-bit signal using either the synchrony or rate of activity. We then examined the mutual information between this signal and the interneuron responses. We found that for a synchrony encoding, FS interneurons carried more information in the first five milliseconds, while both interneuron subtypes carried more information than excitatory neurons in later responses. For a rate encoding, we found that RS interneurons carried more information after several milliseconds. These data demonstrate that distinct interneuron subtypes in the neocortex have distinct sensitivities to synchrony versus rate codes.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number935
    JournalCommunications Biology
    Volume4
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2021 Dec

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2021, The Author(s).

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Medicine (miscellaneous)
    • General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology
    • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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