Decoding neuronal firing and modelling neural networks

Biological neural networks are large systems of complex elements interacting through a complex array of connexions. Individual neurons express a large number of active conductances (Connors et al. 1982; Adams & Gavin, 1986; Llinás, 1988; McCormick, 1990; Hille, 1992) and exhibit a wide variety of dynamic behaviours on time scales ranging from milliseconds to many minutes (Llinás, 1988; Harris-Warrick & Marder, 1991; Churchland & Sejnowski, 1992; Turrigiano et al. 1994).