Artificial and evoked compound IPSPs improved spike-timing precision in individual BLA principal neurons.

<p>(A) Five superimposed traces from a representative principal neuron, held at −60 mV, showing a train of action potentials in response to a depolarizing current step in the presence of DNQX (20 µM), RS-CPP (10 µM) and CGP (2 µM); note the loss of spike-timing precision as the spike train progresses. (B, C) Similar traces to <i>A</i> with the injection of evoked (B) or artificial (C) compound IPSPs to demonstrate improvement of spike-timing precision following a compound IPSP. (D, E, F) Comparisons of spike-timing precision for neurons with no IPSPs (Control, n = 11), evoked IPSPs (n = 11), and artificial IPSPs (n = 11), assessed with a spike correlation metric (see Methods) and plotted as mean ± SEM. Comparisons were made using a two-way ANOVA (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0035320#s3" target="_blank">Results</a>), and windows of significant differences (p<0.05) in spike correlation are denoted with grey boxes.