Figure 5.

Computational network model of activity propagation in the thalamocortical circuit. A, The population activity of the VPm thalamus is controlled as the input to the cortical population. The neurons are arranged spatially in a linear array, such that neurons are more likely to be connected to their neighbors. The network promotes feedforward inhibition in that thalamic VPm neurons synapse on both excitatory (Ex) and inhibitory (In) neurons within the cortical population. Example membrane potential traces for a single neuron across multiple trials are shown in the top. CTX, Cortex. B, Diagram illustrating the inhomogeneous rate function used to generate the thalamic spikes. The magnitude and synchrony of the thalamic spiking activity was systematically modulated as the input to the model. C, Spatial PSTH and averaged PSTH for the excitatory (top left) and inhibitory (top right) cortical population in response to the thalamic input (bottom).