Many Slow Spikes, One Fast Beat: How Neuron Populations Make Rapid Rhythms
Neurons in the brain often fire at relatively slow rates individually. However, when a population of neurons is combined, either through a postsynaptic neuron summing their inputs or through measurement of a local field potential (LFP) summing up the activity of all the neurons in the population, the resulting signal can appear to oscillate much faster than any individual neuron. In the case of a postsynaptic neuron, the membrane potential integrates the contributions of many presynaptic neurons. Even if each presynaptic neuron fires slowly, the combined input can drive the postsynaptic neuron to fire at a higher apparent rate. Similarly, an LFP, which reflects the summed currents from a local population of neurons, can exhibit fast oscillations even when the underlying neurons are firing slowly, due to constructive interference of their individual periodic signals. I want to show formally how a population of neurons can give rise to an higher apparent frequency than the firing rate of...
