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LFP Analysis: Overview

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

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Local field potentials (LFPs) are low-frequency electrical potentials recorded with micro- or macro-electrodes throughout the brain. The upper frequency cutoff of the LFP is often considered to be around 100 Hz but may be as high as 500 Hz in some studies. The normal amplitude of the LFP can range from a few microvolts (e.g., in the basal ganglia) (Goldberg et al. 2004) to hundreds of microvolts in the cortex. Perhaps the earliest recording of an LFP may be attributed to Renshaw, Forbes, and Morison in 1940, who described these potentials in the cortex and the hippocampus of a cat under various anesthetics (Renshaw et al. 1940). Extensive electrophysiological studies have formed the current view that cortical LFPs result from synaptic activity (Eccles 1951; Creutzfeldt et al. 1966; Elul 1971; Klee and Rall 1977; Mitzdorf 1985; Bedard et al. 2004). Correspondingly, the LFP fluctuations tend to have a strict phase relationship to cortical discharge: negative...

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Correspondence to Alain Destexhe .

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Destexhe, A., Goldberg, J.A. (2014). LFP Analysis: Overview. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_782-1

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