ABSTRACT
Neurons in many sensory systems tend to fire action potentials intermittently with spikes grouped into bursts of high-frequency discharge. Functionally, bursts have been implicated in many different phenomena, such as efficient transmission of sensory information [76], regulation of information flow during slow-wave sleep [116], selective communication between neurons [58], epileptic seizures [84], and synaptic plasticity [94]. In recent years, evidence has accumulated that bursts indeed encode sensory information and that they may even be more reliable indicators of important sensory events than spikes fired in tonic mode [47, 76, 82, 86, 99, 107, 128]. To understand the biological relevance of bursts and the cellular mechanisms underlying their generation, a wide variety of approaches are needed. In vivo recordings from neurons in awake/behaving animals allow investigating how different firing modes affect behavioral performance. In vitro experiments, on the other hand, offer a greater control over the preparation and are best suited to study cellular mechanisms of bursting. Finally, various levels of modeling can summarize experimental findings, test our understanding of mechanisms, and inspire new experiments. In this chapter, we will follow this line of investigation and review a number of recent studies of burst firing in weakly electric fish.
