dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaThe functional structure of cortical neuronal networks grown in vitro
| Authors | Luis M. A. Bettencourt, Greg J. Stephens, Michael I. Ham, Guenter W. Gross |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | q-bio/0703018 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0703018 |
| DOI | 10.1103/PhysRevE.75.021915 |
| Journal | Phys. Rev. E 75, 021915 (2007) |
Abstract
We apply an information theoretic treatment of action potential time series measured with microelectrode arrays to estimate the connectivity of mammalian neuronal cell assemblies grown {\it in vitro}. We infer connectivity between two neurons via the measurement of the mutual information between their spike trains. In addition we measure higher point multi-informations between any two spike trains conditional on the activity of a third cell, as a means to identify and distinguish classes of functional connectivity among three neurons. The use of a conditional three-cell measure removes some interpretational shortcomings of the pairwise mutual information and sheds light into the functional connectivity arrangements of any three cells. We analyze the resultant connectivity graphs in light of other complex networks and demonstrate that, despite their {\it ex vivo} development, the connectivity maps derived from cultured neural assemblies are similar to other biological networks and display nontrivial structure in clustering coefficient, network diameter and assortative mixing. Specifically we show that these networks are weakly disassortative small world graphs, which differ significantly in their structure from randomized graphs with the same degree. We expect our analysis to be useful in identifying the computational motifs of a wide variety of complex networks, derived from time series data.
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"abstract": "We apply an information theoretic treatment of action potential time series\nmeasured with microelectrode arrays to estimate the connectivity of mammalian\nneuronal cell assemblies grown {\\it in vitro}. We infer connectivity between\ntwo neurons via the measurement of the mutual information between their spike\ntrains. In addition we measure higher point multi-informations between any two\nspike trains conditional on the activity of a third cell, as a means to\nidentify and distinguish classes of functional connectivity among three\nneurons. The use of a conditional three-cell measure removes some\ninterpretational shortcomings of the pairwise mutual information and sheds\nlight into the functional connectivity arrangements of any three cells. We\nanalyze the resultant connectivity graphs in light of other complex networks\nand demonstrate that, despite their {\\it ex vivo} development, the connectivity\nmaps derived from cultured neural assemblies are similar to other biological\nnetworks and display nontrivial structure in clustering coefficient, network\ndiameter and assortative mixing. Specifically we show that these networks are\nweakly disassortative small world graphs, which differ significantly in their\nstructure from randomized graphs with the same degree. We expect our analysis\nto be useful in identifying the computational motifs of a wide variety of\ncomplex networks, derived from time series data.",
"arxiv_id": "q-bio/0703018",
"authors": [
"Luis M. A. Bettencourt",
"Greg J. Stephens",
"Michael I. Ham",
"Guenter W. Gross"
],
"categories": [
"q-bio.NC",
"cond-mat.dis-nn"
],
"doi": "10.1103/PhysRevE.75.021915",
"journal_ref": "Phys. Rev. E 75, 021915 (2007)",
"title": "The functional structure of cortical neuronal networks grown in vitro",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0703018"
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