SPONTANEOUS NEURONAL FIRING PATTERNS IN THE OCCIPITAL CORTEX OF DEVELOPING RATS

Spontaneous action potentials have been recorded in the cerebral cortex of developing rats under chloral hydrate anaesthesia. These "spike-trains" were subjected to a multivariate analysis of parameters describing different aspects of temporal patterning within each train. Three parameters which reflected clustering of action potentials in, respectively, the range of: 1. (i) milliseconds (the modal interval, derived from the interval histograms); 2. (ii) seconds (the mean "burst period", i.e. the time elapsing between the onset of successive clusters of relatively short intervals); and 3. (iii) minutes (the coefficient of variation for the number of spikes in consecutive 2 min time bins) showed distinctive developmental patterns. © 1990.