Threshold fatigue and information transfer

13 years 4 months ago

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Neurons in vivo must process sensory information in the presence of significant noise. It is thus plausible to assume that neural systems have developed mechanisms to reduce this noise. Theoretical studies have shown that threshold fatigue (i.e. cumulative increases in the threshold during repetitive firing) could lead to noise reduction at certain frequencies bands and thus improved signal transmission as well as noise increases and decreased signal transmission at other frequencies: a phenomenon called noise shaping. There is, however, no experimental evidence that threshold fatigue actually occurs and, if so, that it will actually lead to noise shaping. We analyzed action potential threshold variability in intracellular recordings in vivo from pyramidal neurons in weakly electric fish and found experimental evidence for threshold fatigue: an increase in instantaneous firing rate was on average accompanied by an increase in action potential threshold. We show that, with a minor modif...

Maurice J. Chacron, Benjamin Lindner, André

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