Brain state transitions primarily impact the spontaneous rate of slow-firing neurons

Dearnley, Bradley; Jones, Melissa; Dervinis, Martynas; Okun, Michael

Abstract

The spontaneous firing of neurons is modulated by brain state. Here, we examine how such modulation impacts the overall distribution of firing rates in neuronal populations of neocortical, hippocampal, and thalamic areas across natural and pharmacologically driven brain state transitions. We report that across all the examined combinations of brain area and state transition category, the structure of rate modulation is similar, with almost all fast-firing neurons experiencing proportionally weak modulation, while slow-firing neurons exhibit high inter-neuron variability in the modulation magnitude, leading to a stronger modulation on average. We further demonstrate that this modulation structure is linked to the left-skewed distribution of firing rates on the logarithmic scale and is recapitulated by bivariate log-gamma, but not Gaussian, distributions. Our findings indicate that a preconfigured log-rate distribution with rigid fast-firing neurons and a long left tail of malleable slow-firing neurons is a generic property of forebrain neuronal circuits.

Citation

Dearnley, B., Jones, M., Dervinis, M., & Okun, M. (2023). Brain state transitions primarily impact the spontaneous rate of slow-firing neurons. Cell Reports, 42(10), Article 113185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2023.113185

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 12, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Sep 28, 2023
• Publication Date: Oct 31, 2023
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 5, 2023
• Journal: Cell Reports
• Print ISSN: 2211-1247
• Electronic ISSN: 2211-1247
• Publisher: Cell Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 42
• Issue: 10
• Article Number: 113185
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2023.113185
• Keywords: Arousal; psychedelics; sleep; fast-firing neurons; firing rate; ketamine
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/25674521
• Publisher URL: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(23)01197-X
• Related Public URLs: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221112472301197X