Toward the development of a sensitive, pre-clinical screen for neurological diseases from spontaneous neural coordination in juvenile and young–adult C57BK6 mice

Spontaneous Frequency Bursts (SFBs) are a newly discovered form of long-distance neural coordination. They have several distinctive properties, including near-simultaneity of occurrence (±25–50 ms) across distant brain regions and high within- and across-site coherence in multiple low and high frequency bands, presumably requiring high axonal, dendritic and vascular integrity. We examined whether SFBs occurred in young and young–adult C57BK6 mice with properties similar to those seen in rats. We found that across the entorhinal and piriform cortices, SFBs occur robustly in young and young–adult mice under light anesthesia, and that their rate of occurrence dropped sharply as anesthetic levels increased, as in rats. Moreover, murine SFBs showed high cross-site coherence in multiple frequency bands, including those that require exquisite action potential timing to be maintained across long distances. We discuss our findings in light of SFBs potential as a pre-clinical biomarker for diseases affecting action potential firing and local field potential coherence, especially in high frequency ranges (20–30 Hz and beyond).