美国国立卫生研究院Kareem A. Zaghloul等研究人员合作发现，神经元群体爆发中的神经序列在人类大脑皮层中编码信息。2024年10月16日，《自然》杂志在线发表了这项成果。

研究人员记录了8名参与者在进行视觉分类任务时前颞叶单元群体的放电活动。研究人员发现，在任务过程中，神经元群体的放电活动会组织成爆发。每次爆发中不同激活单元的放电顺序随着刺激类别的不同而变化，形成了各个类别以及类别内不同样本的独特序列。

放电顺序所传递的信息与放电率或刺激出现后的延迟信息是可分离的，且互为补充。总体而言，这些数据提供了证据，表明人类大脑存在一种基于群体放电爆发内神经序列的补充编码方式用于表示信息。

研究人员表示，传统上，神经编码通过神经元在不同刺激下的放电率和延迟变化进行研究。然而，神经元群体也会表现出短暂的放电爆发活动，在此期间，神经元以特定的时间顺序或序列放电。人类大脑可能利用这些群体爆发中的神经序列来有效地表示信息，从而补充基于放电率或延迟的经典神经编码。

附：英文原文

Title: Neuronal sequences in population bursts encode information in human cortex

Author: Xie, Weizhen, Wittig, John H., Chapeton, Julio I., El-Kalliny, Mostafa, Jackson, Samantha N., Inati, Sara K., Zaghloul, Kareem A.

Issue&Volume: 2024-10-16

Abstract: Neural coding has traditionally been examined through changes in firing rates and latencies in response to different stimuli1,2,3,4,5. However, populations of neurons can also exhibit transient bursts of spiking activity, wherein neurons fire in a specific temporal order or sequence6,7,8. The human brain may utilize these neuronal sequences within population bursts to efficiently represent information9,10,11,12, thereby complementing the well-known neural code based on spike rate or latency. Here we examined this possibility by recording the spiking activity of populations of single units in the human anterior temporal lobe as eight participants performed a visual categorization task. We find that population spiking activity organizes into bursts during the task. The temporal order of spiking across the activated units within each burst varies across stimulus categories, creating unique stereotypical sequences for individual categories as well as for individual exemplars within a category. The information conveyed by the temporal order of spiking activity is separable from and complements the information conveyed by the units’ spike rates or latencies following stimulus onset. Collectively, our data provide evidence that the human brain contains a complementary code based on the neuronal sequence within bursts of population spiking to represent information.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08075-8

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08075-8