Carelli, P. V. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2019

Open hardware low-cost system for behavioral experiments simultaneously with electrophysiological recordings.

A major frontier in neuroscience is to find neural correlates of perception, learning, decision making, and a variety of other types of behavior. In the last decades, modern devices allow simultaneous recordings of different operant responses and the electrical activity of large neuronal populations. However, the commercially available instruments for studying operant conditioning are expensive, and the design of low-cost chambers has emerged as an appealing alternative to resource-limited laboratories engaged in animal behavior. In this article, we provide a full description of a platform that records the operant behavior and synchronizes it with the electrophysiological activity. The programming of this platform is open source, flexible and adaptable to a wide range of operant conditioning tasks. We also show results of operant conditioning experiments with freely moving rats with simultaneous electrophysiological recordings. Specifications table O_TBL View this table: org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@114843corg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1f59122org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@10b5b77org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@a220bdorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@136c1b_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_TBL C_TBL

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Criticality between cortical states

Since the first measurements of neuronal avalanches [1], the critical brain hypothesis has gained traction [2]. However, if the brain is critical, what is the phase transition? For several decades it has been known that the cerebral cortex operates in a diversity of regimes [3], ranging from highly synchronous states (e.g. slow wave sleep [4], with higher spiking variability) to desynchronized states (e.g. alert waking [5], with lower spiking variability). Here, using independent signatures of criticality, we show that a phase transition occurs in an intermediate value of spiking variability. The critical exponents point to a universality class different from mean-field directed percolation (MF-DP). Importantly, as the cortex hovers around this critical point [6], it follows a linear relation between the avalanche exponents that encompasses previous experimental results from different setups [7, 8] and is reproduced by a model.

neuroscience↗