Sha Congzhou M, Wang Jian, Mailman Richard B, Yang Yang, Dokholyan Nikolay V
Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Penn State University, University Park, PA, United States.
Department of Pharmacology, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, United States.
Front Comput Neurosci. 2024 Aug 29;18:1293279. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2024.1293279. eCollection 2024.
The question of how consciousness and behavior arise from neural activity is fundamental to understanding the brain, and to improving the diagnosis and treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. There is significant murine and primate literature on how behavior is related to the electrophysiological activity of the medial prefrontal cortex and its role in working memory processes such as planning and decision-making. Existing experimental designs, specifically the rodent spike train and local field potential recordings during the T-maze alternation task, have insufficient statistical power to unravel the complex processes of the prefrontal cortex. We therefore examined the theoretical limitations of such experiments, providing concrete guidelines for robust and reproducible science. To approach these theoretical limits, we applied dynamic time warping and associated statistical tests to data from neuron spike trains and local field potentials. The goal was to quantify neural network synchronicity and the correlation of neuroelectrophysiology with rat behavior. The results show the statistical limitations of existing data, and the fact that making meaningful comparison between dynamic time warping with traditional Fourier and wavelet analysis is impossible until larger and cleaner datasets are available.
意识和行为如何从神经活动中产生，这一问题对于理解大脑以及改善神经和精神疾病的诊断与治疗至关重要。关于行为如何与内侧前额叶皮质的电生理活动相关，以及其在诸如规划和决策等工作记忆过程中的作用，有大量的小鼠和灵长类动物文献。现有的实验设计，特别是在T迷宫交替任务期间对啮齿动物的尖峰序列和局部场电位记录，其统计能力不足以揭示前额叶皮质的复杂过程。因此，我们研究了此类实验的理论局限性，为稳健且可重复的科学研究提供了具体指导方针。为了接近这些理论极限，我们将动态时间规整及相关统计测试应用于神经元尖峰序列和局部场电位的数据。目标是量化神经网络同步性以及神经电生理学与大鼠行为之间的相关性。结果显示了现有数据的统计局限性，以及在获得更大且更清晰的数据集之前，无法将动态时间规整与传统傅里叶和小波分析进行有意义比较的事实。
