Title
Identification of excitatory-inhibitory links and network topology in large-scale neuronal assemblies from multi-electrode recordings.
Abstract
Functional-effective connectivity and network topology are nowadays key issues for studying brain physiological functions and pathologies. Inferring neuronal connectivity from electrophysiological recordings presents open challenges and unsolved problems. In this work, we present a cross-correlation based method for reliably estimating not only excitatory but also inhibitory links, by analyzing multi-unit spike activity from large-scale neuronal networks. The method is validated by means of realistic simulations of large-scale neuronal populations. New results related to functional connectivity estimation and network topology identification obtained by experimental electrophysiological recordings from high-density and large-scale (i.e., 4096 electrodes) microtransducer arrays coupled to in vitro neural populations are presented. Specifically, we show that: (i) functional inhibitory connections are accurately identified in in vitro cortical networks, providing that a reasonable firing rate and recording length are achieved; (ii) small-world topology, with scale-free and rich-club features are reliably obtained, on condition that a minimum number of active recording sites are available. The method and procedure can be directly extended and applied to in vivo multiunits brain activity recordings.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006381
PLOS COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY
DocType
Volume
Issue
Journal
14
8
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
1553-734X
2
0.50
References 
Authors
13
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Vito Paolo Pastore151.66
Paolo Massobrio2225.21
Aleksandar Godjoski351.66
S Martinoia415820.68