Abstract
Following the ideas of Sherrington, neurobiologists have long accepted the doctrine that neurons do not act in isolation, but rather that they join into assemblies in order to accomplish various computational tasks of a higher level of complexity than can be dealt with by a single neuron Several, somewhat conflicting definitions of “neuronal assembly” have been proposed, each implying different functions and properties (see review in Gerstein et al. 1989). Thus, we distinguish a) Sher- ringtonian “neuron pools”, defined by shared target of the output flow, b) cortical columns, defined by shared stimulus preference in the input flow, c) Hebbian assemblies, defined as a net held together by synapses strengthened via the Hebb rule, and d) correlational assemblies, defined through correlated time structure in the spike trains of its member neurons. In this paper we shall be concerned mainly with the experimentally observable characteristics of correlational assemblies.
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Gerstein, G.L. (1992). Assembly Connectivity and Activity: Methods, Results, Interpretations. In: Eeckman, F.H. (eds) Analysis and Modeling of Neural Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4010-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4010-6_1
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