Signals and signs in the nervous system: The dynamic anatomy of electrical activity is probably information-rich

摘要

The dichotomy between two groups of work- ers on neuroelectrical activity is retarding progress. To study the interrelations between neuronal unit spike activity and compound field potentials of cell populations is both unfash- ionable and technically challenging. Neither of the mutual disparagements is justified: that spikes are to higher functions as the alphabet is to Shakespeare and that slow field potentials are irrelevant epiphenomena. Spikes are not the basis of the neural code but of multiple codes that coexist with nonspike codes. Field potentials are mainly information-rich signs of underlying processes, but sometimes they are also signals for neighboring cells, that is, they exert influence.