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The response of cortical neurons to in vivo-like input current: theory and experiment I. Noisy inputs with stationary statistics Received: date / Revised: date Abstract The study of several aspects of the collective dy-namics of interacting neurons can be highly simplified if one assumes that the statistics of the synaptic input is the same for a large population of similarly behaving neurons (mean field approach). In particular, under such an assumption, it is possible to determine and study all the equilibrium points of the network dynamics when the neuronal response to noisy, in vivo-like, synaptic currents is known. The response func-tion can be computed analytically for simple integrate-and-fire neuron models and it can be measured directly in ex-periments in vitro. Here we review theoretical and experi-mental results about the neural response to noisy inputs with stationary statistics. These response functions are important to characterize the collective neural dynamics that are pro-posed to be the neural substrate of working memory, deci-sion making and other cognitive functions. Applications to the case of time-varying inputs are reviewed in a compan-ion paper (Giugliano et al 2008). We conclude that modifie