Topic: inhibition-stabilized network (ISN) regime

Cortical circuits are widely thought to operate in the so-called ``inhibition-stabilized network (ISN) regime’‘, whereby the excitatory (E) subcircuit is unstable in isolation but dynamically stabilized by feedback inhibition (I). So far, this regime has been studied both theoretically and experimentally in its one-dimensional, ``mean-field’‘ form, whereby the overall E population activity constitutes the main mode of instability, and stability is maintained by uniform, blanket inhibition. Here, we investigate the hypothesis that cortical circuits may in fact be operating in a richer, multi-d