Mechanisms gating the flow of information in the cortex: What they might look like and what their uses may be

Abstract

The notion of gating as a mechanism capable of controlling the flow of information from one set of neurons to another, has been studied in many regions of the central nervous system. In the nucleus accumbens, where evidence is especially clear, gating seems to rely on the action of bistable neurons, i.e., of neurons that oscillate between a quiescent “down” state and a firing “up” state, and that act as AND-gates relative to their entries. Independently from these observations, a growing body of evidence now indicates that bistable neurons are also quite abundant in the cortex, although their exact functions in the dynamics of the brain remain to be determined. Here, we propose that at least some of these bistable cortical neurons are part of circuits devoted to gating information flow within the cortex. We also suggest that currently available structural, electrophysiological, and imaging data support the existence of at least three different types of gating architectures. The first architecture involves gating directly by the cortex itself. The second architecture features circuits spanning the cortex and the thalamus. The third architecture extends itself through the cortex, the basal ganglia, and the thalamus. These propositions highlight the variety of mechanisms that could regulate the passage of action potentials between cortical neurons sets. They also suggest that gating mechanisms require larger-scale neural circuitry to control the state of the gates themselves, in order to fit in the overall wiring of the brain and complement its dynamics.