Most of the time it is not doing anything. But it becomes active when the brain s activity increases to a high level. This network of inhibitory neurons may act like the governor on the engine of the cortex, keeping excitability from running away and becoming an epileptic seizure. Some scientists have suggested that inhibitory neurons generate the brain s electrical rhythms. These rhythms offer clues to the brain s state.
Rhythms are smaller and faster when one is awake and slower and larger during sleep.
LTS neurons may be the rhythms source. As we continue this research, we do suspect that this group of inhibitory cells may be the pacemaker for generating some of the brain s rhythmic electrical activity, the kind measured by an EEG, Connors said. The other electrical network of inhibitory neurons described in the study, called FS neurons, seems to be more directly involved in the processing of sensory information, he said. Connors and colleagues study epilepsy, an illness often controlled by drugs that steady the brain s chemical signals to keep cellular networks in balance. Discovery of electrical interconnections among cells in the cerebral cortex may one day provide another pathway for the treatment of brain-based illnesses.