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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Apr 2.
Published in final edited form as: Neuron. 2014 Apr 2;82(1):208–223. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2014.01.039

Figure 5. Social context modulates pauses in GPi neuron firing.

Figure 5

For the population of GPi cells (A), the variability of the spike trains was consistently higher during undirected singing (US) than directed singing (DS), illustrated by the significantly lower CC for US (B). (C) Similarly, pause onset times across the motif were also more variable during US, as evidenced by the lower CC. (D) Within pause events, the reliability of pauses across trials was significantly lower during US. (E–F) The firing rate immediately preceding a pause was significantly higher during US than DS. (E) Depicted is the mean spike rate preceding a pause for a single neuron during US (black) and DS (gray). (F) For all but one cell, the activity immediately preceding a pause was significantly greater during US. (G) To measure the duration of ‘decelerations’ in the firing rate we smoothed each spike train (black curve; see Experimental Procedures) then thresholded the smoothed spike trains at 2 SD below the mean (gray horizontal line). Durations of these ‘decelerations’ were then calculated as the difference between onsets and offsets determined based on threshold crossings of the smoothed curve (gray vertical lines). (H) Group data showing that durations of decelerations were significantly longer during US than DS. See also Fig. S3.