% IMPORTANT: The following is UTF-8 encoded. This means that in the presence
% of non-ASCII characters, it will not work with BibTeX 0.99 or older.
% Instead, you should use an up-to-date BibTeX implementation like “bibtex8” or
% “biber”.
@INPROCEEDINGS{Stella:894221,
author = {Stella, Alessandra and Bouss, Peter and Palm, Günther and
Riehle, Alexa and brochier, thomas and Grün, Sonja},
title = {{S}ignificant {S}patio-{T}emporal {S}pike {P}atterns in
{M}acaque {M}onkey {M}otor {C}ortex},
reportid = {FZJ-2021-03110},
year = {2021},
abstract = {The cell assembly hypothesis [1] postulates that neurons
coordinate their activity through the formation and
repetitive co-activation of groups. While the classical
theory of neural coding revolves around the concept that
information is encoded in firing rates, we assume that
assembly activity is expressed by the occurrence of
precisely timed spatio-temporal patterns (STPs) of spikes
emitted by neurons that are members of the assembly, e.g. a
synfire chain. We focus on a method that is capable of
detecting significant STPs in parallel spike trains, called
SPADE [2,3,4]. SPADE first identifies repeating STPs using
Frequent Itemset Mining [5], and then evaluates the detected
patterns for significance through comparison to patterns
found in surrogate data. Various surrogate techniques can be
used to evaluate significance, and their correct choice is
crucial to ensure that by-chance patterns are not classified
as significant [6]. The final step of the method is the
removal of false positive patterns being a by-product of
true patterns with background activity. Here we first
evaluate how different six types of surrogate techniques
affect the results of SPADE, in terms of the general
statistics of the generated surrogates, and in terms of the
amount of false positives. We conclude that spike-train
shifting [7] is the preferable choice for our type of data,
which typically show a CV < 1 and have a dead time after the
spikes of 1.6/1.2ms induced by the spike sorter (Plexon).
Uniform dithering, in contrast, leads to a high false
positive rate.In a next step, we evaluate if cell assemblies
are active in relation to motor behavior [2]. Therefore, we
analyze 20 experimental sessions, each of about 15min
recording, consisting of parallel spike data recorded by a
10x10 electrode Utah array in the pre-/motor cortex of two
macaque monkeys performing a reach-to-grasp task [8, 9]. The
monkeys have four possible behavioral conditions of grasping
and pulling an object consisting of combinations of two
possible grip types (precision or side grip) and two
different amounts of force required to pull the object (low
or high). We segment each session into 6 periods of 500ms
duration and analyze them independently for the occurrence
of STPs. Each significant STP is identified by its neuron
composition, its number and times of occurrences and the
delays between spikes.We find that significant STPs indeed
occur in all phases of the behavior. Their size ranges
between 2 and 6 neurons, and their maximal spatial extent is
60ms. The STPs are specific to the behavioral context, i.e.
within the different trial epochs and across conditions
(different grip and force type combinations). This suggests
that different assemblies are active in the context of
different behavior. Within a recording session, we typically
find one neuron that is involved in all STPs. The neurons
involved in STPs within a session are not clustered on the
Utah array, but may be far apart. We further plan to
investigate the spatial arrangement of the patterns on the
Utah array, to determine whether there are preferred spatial
directions of pattern spike sequences, as found in [2] for
synchronous patterns. Finally, we plan to investigate
whether the grip type can be better decoded on the basis of
the type of STPs or by using the firing rates of the
neurons. References[1] Hebb, D. O. (1949). John Wiley $\&$
Sons[2] Torre et al (2016) J Neurosci 36:8329–8340. DOI:
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4375-15.2016.[3] Quaglio et al. (2017).
Front Comp Neurosci, 11:41. DOI: 10.3389/fncom.2017.00041[4]
Stella et al. (2019). Biosystems, [5] Pormann et al. (2021).
Submitted[6] Stella et al. (2021). In preparation[7] Pipa et
al. (2013) [8] Brochier et al. (2018). Scientific data, 5,
180055. DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2018.55[9] Riehle et al. (2013)},
month = {Jul},
date = {2021-07-26},
organization = {Neural Coding 2021, Online (Germany),
26 Jul 2021 - 29 Jul 2021},
subtyp = {After Call},
cin = {INM-6 / IAS-6 / INM-10},
cid = {I:(DE-Juel1)INM-6-20090406 / I:(DE-Juel1)IAS-6-20130828 /
I:(DE-Juel1)INM-10-20170113},
pnm = {5232 - Computational Principles (POF4-523) / 571 -
Connectivity and Activity (POF3-571) / 5231 -
Neuroscientific Foundations (POF4-523) / HAF - Helmholtz
Analytics Framework (ZT-I-0003) / HBP SGA2 - Human Brain
Project Specific Grant Agreement 2 (785907) / HBP SGA3 -
Human Brain Project Specific Grant Agreement 3 (945539)},
pid = {G:(DE-HGF)POF4-5232 / G:(DE-HGF)POF3-571 /
G:(DE-HGF)POF4-5231 / G:(DE-HGF)ZT-I-0003 /
G:(EU-Grant)785907 / G:(EU-Grant)945539},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)6},
url = {https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/894221},
}