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Local Field Potential, Relationship to Unit Activity

Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

Synonyms

Electroencephalogram, relation to unit activity; Local field potential, contamination by spikes; Local field potential, spike contribution; Local field potential, spike-triggered average

Definition

Unit activity usually refers to timing of spikes elicited by individual neurons (single-unit activity, SUA) or local (r < 140 μm) population of neurons (multiunit activity, MUA; Buzsáki 2004). Although local field potential (LFP) reflects both subthreshold and spiking activities that are summed over larger population of neurons (r < 450 μm; Berens et al. 2008), usually it does not display discriminable spikes. Nevertheless, the amplitude of high-frequency LFP (>40 Hz) often correlates with population firing rate, whereas the phase and amplitude of low-frequency LFP (<10 Hz) modulate this relationship. The LFP–spike relation is very sensitive to neuronal correlations – at high synchrony levels, neurons produce macroscopic spikes visible in the raw LFP signal (“population spikes”).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unité de Neurosciences, Information et Complexité, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Bartosz Teleńczuk & Prof. Alain Destexhe

Authors
  1. Bartosz Teleńczuk
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  2. Prof. Alain Destexhe
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Correspondence to Bartosz Teleńczuk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Teleńczuk, B., Destexhe, A. (2014). Local Field Potential, Relationship to Unit Activity. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_543-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_543-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Local Field Potential, Relationship to Unit Activity
    Published:
    10 November 2020

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_543-2

  2. Original

    Local Field Potential, Relationship to Unit Activity
    Published:
    13 March 2014

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_543-1

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