Figure 5.

Neuron activity in task versus rest epochs. (A) Distribution of firing rates for fast-spiking (blue), regular-firing (orange), and burst-firing (green) neurons during performance of the task (x-axis) and during rest (y-axis) epochs. Average firing rates were high for fast-spiking neurons, and these cells tended to fire at similar rates between epochs (though slightly reduced during rest). Firing rates were lower for regular-firing neurons, and were less correlated between task and rest epochs. Most regular-firing and fast-spiking neuron rates fell below the graph diagonal, suggesting that firing rates tended to be higher during the task epoch. (B) Firing rates normalized across epochs, averaged within groups. Both fast-spiking and regular-firing neurons fired at higher rates during the task epoch (error bars SEM across 5 rats). (C) Correlation coefficients between epochs for population firing rate vectors across neuron classes. In fast-spiking and burst-firing neurons, population firing rate vectors were highly correlated between task and rest epochs; in regular-firing neurons, populations were less correlated, meaning that a relatively distinct set of regular-firings neurons was active during the 2 epochs, and therefore that the population represented the 2 behavioral conditions differently.