As a control, differences in firing rate between rewarded and unrewarded trials in the same block PD173074 purchase were compared using the same procedure in the interval from −1.5 to 0.5 s in the absence of odor (the prestimulus interval) to assess the effectiveness of the correction for multiple comparisons. Odors did not elicit divergent responses in this control time range

(data not shown). At test was also used to classify units as “responsive.” The rate of firing in the RA (0.5 to 2.5 s) was compared with the firing rate during the reference interval (−1.5 to 0.5 s). The FDR was used to correct for multiple comparisons, and a unit was classified as responsive only if p values fell below FDR in at least two or more blocks. We would like to thank Drs. Gidon Felsen, Nathan Schoppa, and Dan Tollin for discussions; Dr. Ed Hsu; Osama Abdulla; and the University BMS-777607 of Utah Small Animal MRI Facility. This work was funded by NIH grants DC00566 (D.R.), DC04657 (D.R.), DC008855 (D.R.), DC008066 (W.D.), and DC002994 (M.L.). “
“The neocortex is the largest part of the mammalian brain, yet its function is still poorly understood. Anatomical and physiological studies have emphasized the vertical (or “columnar”) nature of its connectivity (Hubel and Wiesel, 1977, Lorente de Nó, 1949 and Mountcastle,

1982), giving rise to the proposal that the neocortex is composed of repetitions of a basic modular unit, performing essentially the same computation on different inputs (Douglas et al., 2004, Hubel and Wiesel, 1974, Lorente de Nó, 1949 and Mountcastle, 1982). Consistent with this hypothesis, in different species and cortical

areas, the cortex develops in a stereotypical fashion (Katz and Shatz, 1996) with similar interlaminar connections (Burkhalter, 1989, Douglas et al., 2004 and Gilbert and Wiesel, 1979). At the same time, there are structural differences among cortical areas and species (DeFelipe, 1993), so each cortical region could still have a specific, dedicated circuit. Crucial to this debate is the knowledge of how different subtypes of cortical neurons connect to each other, an issue for which there is only scant available data. Although some studies find TCL great specificity in cortical connections (Callaway, 1998, Hubel, 1988 and Thomson and Lamy, 2007), others have proposed that cortical neurons connect without any specificity (Braitenberg and Schüzt, 1991 and Peters and Jones, 1984), forming perhaps a neural network, or a “tabula rasa,” on which activity-dependent developmental rules could sculpt mature circuits (Kalisman et al., 2005, Rolls and Treves, 1998 and Stepanyants et al., 2002). To measure the specificity in cortical connections, one would need techniques that reveal synaptically connected neurons. In the last decade, electrophysiological recordings from connected cortical neurons in brain slices (Thomson et al.