Topic: parvalbumin-expressing neurons

Cortical circuits are built from diverse collections of neurons. Recent large-scale surveys have characterized this striking variability in terms of molecular, morphological, and electrophysiological features, identifying hundreds to thousands of distinct neuronal cell types. However, in computational neuroscience, we often stick our heads in the sand and ignore these details, instead basing theory on homogeneous populations of simple ‘point neurons'. The problem with this approach is that it's currently unknown what is lost with such simplifying assumptions. The simplification may be entirely

Neuronal diversity in the cortex is the largest amongst GABAergic neurons. In the hippocampus, GABAergic cells have been sorted in several groups based on their morphology, firing patterns, connectivity, molecular profiling, and RNA content. Identification and manipulation of these neuron types is a prerequisite to deciphering their role in circuit dynamics, behavior, and the computational mechanisms of the cortical networks they are embedded in. We first grouped the virtual totality of GABAergic neurons into four major families. Parvalbumin-expressing neurons, Somatostatin-expressing neurons,