How could a chirp be more effective than a louder clock--resonant transfer of energy between subthreshold excitation pulses and excitable tissues.

Abstract

By definition, electrical resonance of excitable biomembranes reflects their remarkable ability to select input signals with preferential frequencies as ones that will pass through the chain of information exchange within a coordinated organism. This feature is known to be caused and regulated by the voltage-dependent kinetics of transmembrane ion channels. Knowledge about the resonant behavior of excitable cells may prove crucial toward better underpinning those essential properties of neurons which make them to function as a highly coordinated network. In this work we present novel experimental evidence which strongly supports the paradigm of selective communication between excitable cells, by no more than efficient transfer of energy which takes place when the frequency of subthreshold presynaptic pulses matches the natural, resonant frequency of a target excitable tissue. As a possible direct application, our novel experimental results prove the functional importance of bursting activity of pre-synaptic neurons as an effective physiological mechanism for discriminatory communication between neurons.