Synchronized bursting induced by network connectivity in cortical neuronal cultures

Synchronization of cortical neural cultures is studied as a function of the effective network connectivity in the phenomenon of synchronized firing (SF). The synchronized bursting frequency (during SF) of the network is found to be much slower than the characteristic time scale of a neuron and increases with the network connectivity. Using fluorescence imaging techniques, we found that SF occurs only when the incubation time is longer than some critical age t _c and the synchronized bursting frequency f increases with time as f = f_c + f_o log(t/t_c). Furthermore, t_c is found to scale with the cell plating density ρ as t_c ∼ 1/√ρ=. Based on the result of photolysis of neurons, the synchronized bursting frequency is shown to be related to the network connectivity, hence, the growth behavior can be inferred from the measured SF frequencies. We further build a network growth model with the characteristics of an early stage active growth followed by a late-stage retarded growth, which can account for the experimental data quantitatively. Electrophysiological measurements using double-patch techniques reveal that even though the bursting frequencies are synchronized, the intra-burst spikes are not. We also present a mean-field model of the neural network that enables the neuron firing to be inhibited and generates inter-spike intervals with long time scales resulting in bursting.