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There are a lot of high frequency electrical patterns in the brain. Individual neurons have a max frequency of less than 200hz (most less than 100hz), but volleys of neural populations can phase lock to much higher frequencies. The hair cells in the ear phase lock to sounds up to 8000hz— this is followed by phase locking in the auditory nerve and further has been followed all the way to cortical synchronization. In humans only measured up to 1200hz in cortex with EEG, but this seems to be a measurement challenge. High frequency neuroscience has a big measurement challenge, actually. Very expensive.

If you are interested in topics like coupled oscillators, synchrony and entrainment, I cowrote a paper that you may enjoy. We cite the OP (2020).

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurorobotics/articles/...



How does this compare to the optical neurons? Is the visual response modulated by something other than visual wavelength stimuli?


In the retina I believe it is chemicals that selectively resonate to different optical wavelengths. Those then trigger the action potential. (Actually, it’s in reverse, iir— darkness is maximal firing rate and light inhibits the rate of firing). I’ll look it up later and post back.

Note that in the ear, the basilar membrane also affects sound perception, based on selective resonance effects, ensuring that a specific band of hair cells are most likely to phase lock to the sounds. There is both space encoding (ie where on the basilar membrane) and time encoding (phase locking to the signal).


I can confirm that all of this checks out except for the chemical "resonance" in the cones in the retina. It is fascinatingly complex how the molecules are tuned to selectively absorb energy in particular bands of the visible spectrum. Whether one would call this resonance or not will hinge on the definition (fwiw, the definition of resonance in physics can be exceedingly broad).


thank you very much for sharing this!




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