Information theoretical assessment of neural spiking activity with temperature modulation

Previous research has shown that hypothermia immediately after Cardiac Arrest (CA) improves neurological outcomes. In order to study how hypothermia affects neural spiking, cortical and subcortical neural activity was recorded from rodents. Consistent with previous findings, preliminary results show that the firing rate is proportional to the temperature. We also studied the information coded in the spike-timing information of individual neurons and observed that information content varies with temperature. Furthermore, there is an increased dependence between the cortex and sub-cortical structures such as the Thalamus during hypothermia. The latter is most likely an indicator of coupling between these highly connected structures in response to temperature manipulation leading to arousal after global cerebral ischemia.