Detecting parallel bursts in in silico generated parallel spike train data

Introduction Neurons process stimuli as joint groups [1]. With multielectrode arrays being capable of recording hundreds of channels in parallel the need for computational methods arises to efficiently find hints for such groups in the recorded data. Enumerating all possible subsets of neurons becomes quickly unfeasible if not virtually impossible to do. Therefore, we developed methods for efficiently finding so-called assemblies of synchronously firing neurons in spike train data [2,3]. However, these methods only consider nearly synchronous single activations of neurons and ignore the non-stationary firing rates. It has been shown that the bursting behavior of neurons is a different mode of communication between neurons and has to be considered in the analysis as well [4,5].