Differences in Spiking Patterns Among Cortical Neurons

Spike sequences recorded from four cortical areas of an awake behaving monkey were examined to explore characteristics that vary among neurons. We found that a measure of the local variation of interspike intervals, L_V, is nearly the same for every spike sequence for any given neuron, while it varies significantly among neurons. The distributions of L_V values for neuron ensembles in three of the four areas were found to be distinctly bimodal. Two groups of neurons classified according to the spiking irregularity exhibit different responses to the same stimulus. This suggests that neurons in each area can be classified into different groups possessing unique spiking statistics and corresponding functional properties.