Figure 6.

The effect of noise on phase-reset. (A) The model perturbed with balanced synaptic noise was stimulated by either 5-ms long or 30-ms long current pulses of 800 pA (lower traces show the stimulation protocols) to elicit a singlet or a triplet of spikes, respectively. Visual inspection shows an evident silent pause with the triplet but not with the singlet. (B) The PSTH for singlet shows a brief pause partly populated by spikes. The PSTH for triplets shows a pause roughly corresponding to the average pacemaker cycle free from any spikes. The insets show that the silent pause is short and unreliable with a singlet but not with a triplet. The bottom panel shows data recorded in vivo following vibrissal stimulation in the anaesthetized rat, which cause a brief spike sequence followed by a silent pause. Note the remarkable similarity between in vivo recordings and the model (triplet).