Cortex-wide BOLD fMRI activity reflects locally-recorded slow oscillation-associated calcium waves.

When a person is in a deep non-dreaming sleep, neurons in their brain alternate slowly between periods of silence and periods of activity. This gives rise to low-frequency brain rhythms called slow waves, which are thought to help stabilize memories. Slow wave activity can be detected on multiple scales, from the pattern of electrical impulses sent by an individual neuron to the collective activity of the brain’s entire outer layer, the cortex. But does slow wave activity in an individual group of neurons in the cortex affect the activity of the rest of the brain? To find out, Schwalm, Schmid, Wachsmuth et al. took advantage of the fact that slow waves also occur under general anesthesia, a…

Analysis of Activity States of Local Neuronal Microcircuits in Mouse Brain

Time series of neuronal activity corresponding to different activity states in mouse brain are analyzed in the time domain and the time-frequency domain. The signals are associated with either a slow wave brain state or a persistent brain state. For both states, characteristic spectral features are identified and a simple detector is proposed that is able to identify the brain state with low latency and high accuracy. In practice, being able to monitor the brain state online and in real time is crucial for improved in vivoexperiments and, ultimately, for a causal understanding of brain dynamics.

A multi-scale approach for testing and detecting peaks in time series

An approach is presented that combines a statistical test for peak detection with the estimation of peak positions in time series. Motivated by empirical observations in neuronal recordings, we aim at investigating peaks of different heights and widths. We use a moving window approach to compare the differences of estimated slope coefficients of local regression models. We combine multiple windows and use the global maximum of all different processes as a test statistic. After rejection, a multiple filter algorithm combines peak positions estimated from multiple windows. Analysing neuronal activity recorded in anaesthetized mice, the procedure could identify significant differences between …

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