A Biophysical Model of Cortical Up and Down States: Excitatory-Inhibitory Balance and H-Current

During slow-wave sleep, cortical neurons oscillate between up and down states. Using a computational model of cortical neurons with realistic synaptic transmission, we determined that reverberation of activity in a small network of about 40 pyramidal cells could account for the properties of up states in vivo. We found that experimentally accessible quantities such as membrane potential fluctuations, firing rates and up state durations could be used as indicators of the size of the network undergoing the up state. We also show that the H-current, together with feed-forward inhibition can act as a gating mechanism for up state initiation.

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