Figure 2.

Schematic diagram of a hippocampal hybrid network. A set of model cells simulated with GenNet within RTXI (shaded box on left) interacts with a real pyramidal neuron being recorded with the patch-clamp technique in a hippocampal slice (right). Dark circles represent individual model cells that are connected via virtual synapses (dashed lines) to a real pyramidal neuron. A patch-clamp pipette is used to record the voltage from this neuron in real time which is then passed as input to GenNet (upper arrow). After a computational time-step has elapsed, GenNet computes the synaptic current that must be passed to the pyramidal neuron and RTXI sends this current into the cell via the pipette (lower arrow). Multiple adjacent pyramidal neurons indicate that an arbitrary number of real cells can be embedded into the hybrid network. Abbreviations refer to the regions of the hippocampal formation: mEC, medial entorhinal cortex; DG, dentate gyrus; CA3, cornu Ammonis 3; CA1: cornu Ammonis 1.