A MODEL OF CORTICALLY INDUCED SYNCHRONIZATION IN THE LATERAL GENICULATE-NUCLEUS OF THE CAT - A ROLE FOR LOW-THRESHOLD CALCIUM CHANNELS

Recently Sillito et al. (Nature 1994;369:479-82) discovered correlatio ns in the spike trains of a relatively distant pair of cat lateral gen iculate nucleus cells when simultaneously stimulated by a drifting gra ting; no such correlation occurs when the Visual cortex is removed. In a further analysis of the data, we have found that short, high-freque ncy bursts contribute substantially to the synchronization and we hypo thesize that the origin of the bursts is the low-threshold calcium spi ke. Guided by this hypothesis, our model of the corticogeniculate path way and early visual system reproduces the experimental data in nearly every detail, as well as making predictions about cortical activity d uring the synchronizing process. We also discuss the possible behavior al relevance of correlations in the geniculo-cortical loop as well as other neural systems. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserv ed.