• Andrew Miri, Kayvon Daie, Aristides B Arrenberg, Herwig Baier, Emre Aksay, and David W Tank.
• Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
• Nat. Neurosci. 2011 Aug 21; 14 (9): 1150-9.

AbstractIn a neural integrator, the variability and topographical organization of neuronal firing-rate persistence can provide information about the circuit's functional architecture. We used optical recording to measure the time constant of decay of persistent firing (persistence time) across a population of neurons comprising the larval zebrafish oculomotor velocity-to-position neural integrator. We found extensive persistence time variation (tenfold; coefficients of variation = 0.58-1.20) across cells in individual larvae. We also found that the similarity in firing between two neurons decreased as the distance between them increased and that a gradient in persistence time was mapped along the rostrocaudal and dorsoventral axes. This topography is consistent with the emergence of persistence time heterogeneity from a circuit architecture in which nearby neurons are more strongly interconnected than distant ones. Integrator circuit models characterized by multiple dimensions of slow firing-rate dynamics can account for our results.

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