Localization of single-cell current sources based on extracellular potential patterns: the spike CSD method

Traditional current source density (tCSD) calculation method calculates neural current source distribution of extracellular (EC) potential patterns, thus providing important neurophysiological information. While the tCSD method is based on physical principles, it adopts some assumptions, which can not hold for single-cell activity. Consequently, tCSD method gives false results for single-cell activity. A new, spike CSD (sCSD) method has been developed, specifically designed to reveal CSD distribution of single cells during action potential generation. This method is based on the inverse solution of the Poisson-equation. The efficiency of the method is tested and demonstrated with simulations, and showed, that the sCSD method reconstructed the original CSD more precisely than the tCSD. The sCSD method is applied to EC spatial potential patterns of spikes, measured in cat primary auditory cortex with a 16-channel chronically implanted linear probe in vivo. Using our method, the cell-electrode distances were estimated and the spatio-temporal CSD distributions were reconstructed. The results suggested, that the new method is potentially useful in determining fine details of the spatio-temporal dynamics of spikes.