Cortical reliability amid noise and chaos

Max Nolte (), Michael W. Reimann, James G. King, Henry Markram and Eilif B. Muller ()
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Max Nolte: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Michael W. Reimann: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
James G. King: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Henry Markram: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Eilif B. Muller: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Abstract Typical responses of cortical neurons to identical sensory stimuli appear highly variable. It has thus been proposed that the cortex primarily uses a rate code. However, other studies have argued for spike-time coding under certain conditions. The potential role of spike-time coding is directly limited by the internally generated variability of cortical circuits, which remains largely unexplored. Here, we quantify this internally generated variability using a biophysical model of rat neocortical microcircuitry with biologically realistic noise sources. We find that stochastic neurotransmitter release is a critical component of internally generated variability, causing rapidly diverging, chaotic recurrent network dynamics. Surprisingly, the same nonlinear recurrent network dynamics can transiently overcome the chaos in response to weak feed-forward thalamocortical inputs, and support reliable spike times with millisecond precision. Our model shows that the noisy and chaotic network dynamics of recurrent cortical microcircuitry are compatible with stimulus-evoked, millisecond spike-time reliability, resolving a long-standing debate.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11633-8

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