Spatiotemporal models of brain electrophysiology. (360G-Wellcome-088446_Z_09_A)

Modern two-dimensional (2D) multielectrode arrays allow for the simultaneous recording of extracellular activity from a large number of neurons. Such arrays yield important information for pairwise as well as higher order correlations among neurons and can also be used for the study of learning cell populations. In particular, 2D electrode arrays have been used to collect data from the visual cortex, the motor cortex for prosthetics, along with one dimensional (1D) silicon probes etc. Most of this work uses arrays to extract the action potential of single neurons by focusing on the relevant spike rates. Thus, many data features are effectively ignored. The main goal of this project is to use advanced mathematical methods to extract new information from 2D multielectrode arrays and on the other hand to develop novel neural mass models, which consider spatially extended neural activity. At present, the determination of the distribution of current sources and sinks is carried o ut using the socalled Current Source-Density (CSD) method. This method does not provide any detailed spatial characterisation of the relevant sources. Furthermore, the current neural mass models, although quite successful, do not take into consideration the distribution of current sources and sinks in neural tissue.