TY - JOUR TI - Cell assemblies at multiple time scales with arbitrary lag constellations AU - Russo, Eleonora AU - Durstewitz, Daniel A2 - Howard, Marc VL - 6 PY - 2017 DA - 2017/01/11 SP - e19428 C1 - eLife 2017;6:e19428 DO - 10.7554/eLife.19428 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.19428 AB - Hebb's idea of a cell assembly as the fundamental unit of neural information processing has dominated neuroscience like no other theoretical concept within the past 60 years. A range of different physiological phenomena, from precisely synchronized spiking to broadly simultaneous rate increases, has been subsumed under this term. Yet progress in this area is hampered by the lack of statistical tools that would enable to extract assemblies with arbitrary constellations of time lags, and at multiple temporal scales, partly due to the severe computational burden. Here we present such a unifying methodological and conceptual framework which detects assembly structure at many different time scales, levels of precision, and with arbitrary internal organization. Applying this methodology to multiple single unit recordings from various cortical areas, we find that there is no universal cortical coding scheme, but that assembly structure and precision significantly depends on the brain area recorded and ongoing task demands. KW - cell assemblies KW - neural coding KW - neurostatistics KW - multiple single-unit recordings JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -