Abstract
It is readily deducible from two basic characteristics of single nerve cells that functionally significant neural activity in the cerebral cortex must be cooperative in nature. In the first place, the activity impinging upon a neuron must exceed a threshold value in order to produce a response in that cell. It has been estimated that a cortical neuron must receive impulses from at least ten other cells to reach threshold (Eccles, 1964). Secondly, the postsynaptic potential generated within a cell due to impinging activity has a finite decay time, with typical decay constants being on the order of 10 msec. (Eccles, 1964). Thus a cell will reach threshold only if it receives a sufficient number of impulses from other cells within a circumscribed time interval. As the interconnections among neurons have a rather precise spatial organization, it follows that only large scale neural activity which is both spatially and temporally coherent can lead to the activation of a sufficient number of other neurons to permit further processing. Conversely, the activity of a like number of neurons in either a spatially or temporally random fashion will fail to generate further activity. Such random activity will thus be treated by the nervous system as noise and will be effectively filtered out.
To Dr. Peter A. Leermakers in Memoriam.
This research was supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute.
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Wilson, H.R. (1973). Cooperative Phenomena in a Homogeneous Cortical Tissue Model. In: Haken, H. (eds) Synergetics. Vieweg+Teubner Verlag, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-01511-6_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-01511-6_17
Publisher Name: Vieweg+Teubner Verlag, Wiesbaden
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