Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis for characterizing synaptic efficacy

The role of background synaptic activity in cortical processing has recently received much attention. How do individual neurons extract information when embedded in a noisy background? When examining the impact of a synaptic input on postsynaptic firing, it is important to distinguish a change in overall firing probability from a true change in neuronal sensitivity to a particular input (synaptic efficacy) that corresponds to a change in detection performance. Here we study the impact of background synaptic input on neuronal sensitivity to individual synaptic inputs using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. We use the area under the ROC curve as a measure of synaptic efficacy, here defined as the ability of a postsynaptic action potential to identify a particular synaptic input event. An advantage of using ROC analysis to measure synaptic efficacy is that it provides a measure that is independent of postsynaptic firing rate. Furthermore, changes in mean excitation or inhibition, although affecting overall firing probability, do not modulate synaptic efficacy when measured in this way. Changes in overall conductance also affect firing probability but not this form of synaptic efficacy. Input noise, here defined as the variance of the input current, does modulate synaptic efficacy, however. This effect persists when the change in input variance is coupled with a change in conductance (as would result from changing background activity).