Summary
The spontaneous nerve impulse activity of 354 neurons of the mesencephalic reticular formation resp. the superior colliculus of unanesthetized curarized rats resp. cats has been recorded by microelectrodes and processed by means of a LINC computer. A relationship between the shape of interimpulse interval histogram (IH) and the mean interimpulse intervals (MI) of the same spike train has been found. Neurons with long MI's (low frequency of firing) are never characterized by symmetrical IH's, the exponential IH (characterizing random occurrence of impulses) being the most common in these cases. Neurons with symmetrical IH's are usually those with short MI's (fast firing rate). Longlasting recordings with changing MI show that the shape of IH's may not be considered in general a stable feature of certain neurons (in the majority of cases it changes together with the MI). Neurons with symmetrical IH's and short MI's may not be found in the superficial layers but in the depth of the superior colliculus only (having probably like the reticular formation integrative functions). A computer model is presented explaining the observed dependency of the IH shape on the MI duration in terms of the change in the mean frequency of common input process.
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Škvařil, J., Radil-Weiss, T., Bohdanecký, Z. et al. Spontaneous discharge patterns of mesencephalic neurons: interval histogram and mean interval relationship. Kybernetik 9, 11–15 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00272554
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00272554