Neuronal Cooperativity

To advance our understanding of higher brain functions it is necessary to study the interneuronal relationships governing neuronal processing. Since this is an extremely complex problem, many researchers have been content to study the immense but relatively simple "cellular bottom", in the hope that some kind of "bottom-up" analysis would emerge of its own accord. In contrast to this, each of the authors of the present book is engaged in an active search for the way "up". The eleven chapters describe a variety of new and innovative methods and the results obtained. The reader will come to appreciate how the intricate and yet weak interactions among nerve cells give rise to the functional capacity of the mammalian brain. This book provides important insights into processes related to higher brain functions and memory. Soon after the technique of micro electrode recording had become a routine method in the 1950s, many researchers felt that an obvious next step was to in­ vestigate the behaviour of larger networks of interacting cells. However, despite many early efforts, very little progress was made in that direction: a conceptual basis had not yet evolved, and the computer as an analytical tool was not avail­ able. This has now changed, with the result that the cooperation of neurons is again becoming a focus of interest. In 1987, with the support of the Volkswagen Foundation, I was able to organize a conference on the subject of neuronal cooperativity near Freiburg, W. Germany, bringing together theoreticians and experimentalists working in this field. It became clear that many new theoretical concepts had evolved since the early days but that experiments on the subject were still difficult. Later, with the encouragement of Professor H. Haken, editor of the Springer Series in Synergetics, I decided to ask a number of experimentalists, many of whom had participated in the conference, to contribute to a book. The aim was not to focus exclusively on the newest results but rather to give an overall idea of how the difficult question of cooperativity can be approached experimentally Front Matter....Pages I-XII Introduction....Pages 1-4 The Structure—Function Problem in Visual Cortical Circuitry Studied by Cross-Correlation Techniques and Multi-Channel Recordings....Pages 5-29 Optical Imaging of Neuronal Activity in the Living Brain....Pages 30-51 Dynamic Aspects of Neuronal Cooperativity: Fast Stimulus-Locked Modulations of Effective Connectivity....Pages 52-67 Temporal Structure of Cortical Information Processing: Cortical Architecture, Oscillations, and Non-Separability of Spatio-Temporal Receptive Field Organization....Pages 68-104 Spike Train Correlations on Slow Time Scales in Monkey Visual Cortex....Pages 105-132 Connectivity and Functional Organization in the Mammalian Visual Cortex....Pages 133-164 The Formation of Cooperative Cell Assemblies in the Visual Cortex....Pages 165-183 Stimulus-Specific Synchronizations in the Visual Cortex: Linking of Local Features Into Global Figures?....Pages 184-224 Cross-Correlation Analyses of Motoneuron Inputs in a Coordinated Motor Act....Pages 225-248 Correlated Activity of Neurons: A Neural Code for Higher Brain Functions?....Pages 249-279 Systems Neuronal Activity in Learning....Pages 280-297 Back Matter....Pages 299-302