The neocortical local circuit--a research workshop held in Sde-Boker, Israel, May 4-8, 1997

This report does not capture the raw vitality of the Sde-Boker workshop. We did not anticipate that so many presentations would focus on the importance of spike timing in the operations of cortical microcircuits and the profound effect of this on other cortical and subcortical networks. The roles of individual spikes, temporal firing patterns, neuronal synchronization, intrinsic neuronal and network oscillation, coincidence detection, integration by individual cells or even individual dendritic spines were also strong themes of nearly all presentations. The cortex could be viewed as a network, which, is similar to an orchestra, where each neuron (musician) generates particular timed spike patterns (notes) for which 'every spike counts' (the symphony). This assertion would have been the butt of considerable skepticism less than a decade ago. The conference led to a view that the cerebral cortex is a spatially distributed timing network. As such, the consensus reached provides a conceptual framework for exciting new discoveries in the next decade. One of the truly exciting outcomes of the workshop was the seamless integration of concepts derived from studies employing direct approaches such as brain slices to cell cultures and computer simulations to whole animal physiology. The availability of an ever expanding armamentarium of increasingly sophisticated techniques and cross-fertilization promises develop the field in a direction that is as flexible and as subtle as the cortical tissue it seeks to explain. It was perhaps symbolic that this meeting was held at a place in the desert where David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the modern state of Israel, had a vision of pioneers settling the untamed Negev that had intrigued and intimidated mankind for so long. The hauntingly beautiful Negev, like the cerebral cortex, was an unyielding frontier. Now thanks to modern ingenuity and technology the Negev can, like the cerebral cortex, finally be conquered.