Past, present and future of spike sorting techniques.

Spike sorting is a crucial step to extract information from extracellular recordings. With new recording opportunities provided by the development of new electrodes that allow monitoring hundreds of neurons simultaneously, the scenario for the new generation of algorithms is both exciting and challenging. However, this will require a new approach to the problem and the development of a common reference framework to quickly assess the performance of new algorithms.

Single trial analysis of field potentials in perception, learning and memory.

The analysis of single trial responses of field potentials is an important tool to study brain signals. Single trial analyses can indeed provide additional information that is obscured or simply not available in the average responses. The importance of studying single trial responses is reinforced by the fact that different brain processes are correlated with trial-by-trial variation of the responses.

Timing of single-neuron and local field potential responses in the human medial temporal lobe.

The relationship between the firing of single cells and local field potentials (LFPs) has received increasing attention, with studies in animals [1-11] and humans [12-14]. Recordings in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) have demonstrated the existence of neurons with selective and invariant responses [15], with a relatively late but precise response onset around 300 ms after stimulus presentation [16-18] and firing only upon conscious recognition of the stimulus [19]. This represents a much later onset than expected from direct projections from inferotemporal cortex [16, 18].