Electrophysiological properties of intralaminar thalamocortical cells discharging rhythmic (approximately 40 HZ) spike-bursts at approximately 1000 HZ during waking and rapid eye movement sleep.

Thalamocortical neurons located in the large-celled district of the cat intralaminar centrolateral nucleus were found to discharge spike-bursts with unusually high frequencies (800-1000 Hz) during spindle oscillations of the electroencephalogram. In chronically implanted animals, similar spike-bursts were also fired during wakefulness and rapid eye movement sleep, two behavioral states in which other thalamocortical neurons tonically fire single spikes. Such high-frequency spike-bursts recurred with a fast rhythm of 20-40 Hz during waking and rapid eye movement sleep. Intracellular recordings under barbiturate anesthesia showed that, during spindle oscillations, the spike-bursts of intralaminar neurons are generated by brief low-threshold spikes with a much shorter refractory phase than in other thalamocortical cells. Depolarizing pulses from the resting membrane potential triggered fast oscillations (20-80 Hz) crowned by short high-frequency (800-1000 Hz) spike-bursts. During the inter-spindle epochs, the "tonic" firing of these neurons was, in fact, a fast oscillation (30-40 Hz) of the membrane potential leading to single spikes or spike-doublets. Autocorrelograms computed from inter-spindle epochs, at relatively depolarized levels, confirmed the presence of multiple peaks at this fast rhythm. The properties of these neurons make them well suited for the distribution of fast rhythms during arousal and rapid eye movement sleep over the cerebral cortex.