Initiation of the activity requires a transient heterogeneous excitatory stimulus.
Stable maintenance requires asynchrony in neural firing.
Finally, we propose a novel mechanism that terminates such activity by direct excitation, without any need for inhibition. We show that this excitation-induced termination is due to two biophysical mechanisms. The first is a transient synchronization of the neurons. The second is a radical increase in the firing rates of the neurons. We give concrete examples of such from the responses in lateral intraparietal neurons in monkey during a delayed saccade task and from the state dependent stimulus responses in the primary visual neurons.