How Do Nerve Cells Code and Transfer Information?

The way in which nerve cells code information is a riddle that has occupied neuro-researchers for many years. Doctoral research conducted by Ayala Matzner, supervised by Prof. Izhar Bar-Gad, showed that the nerve cells of the basal ganglions (nerve cells located deep within the brain and connected to regulating voluntary movements) have an active repertoire of calculative qualities, which change due to various types of input and are dependent on the internal state of the nerve cell. This is in complete contrast to classical calculative models, which presume that a neuron has static calculation abilities that are unchanged in various input conditions. Furthermore, the researchers showed that the information-transferring qualities of the nerve cells are not fixed and depend on the state of the neural network, which affects the singular nerve cells. Therefore, classic static models independent of context only present some of the nerval coding abilities, and do not describe the dynamics of the nerve cell, which occur due to various kinds of inputs.

Cross-referencing the results of the experiments logged at the lab with simulations from the library provided insights regarding the mechanism at the base of this input-dependent neural coding. The research focused on nerve cells in the basal ganglions, whose input qualities drastically change in various disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and Dystonia. The research findings shed a new light on what we know so far about nerve coding and contribute to our understanding when it comes to the dynamic behavior of coding in healthy and diseased situations.

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