Interpretation of Coherence Phase and Rhythmic Cumulant Results; A Simulation Study

The interpretation of the cumulant plots, an analysis method often used in electrophysiology studies is not straight forward. The results show activity that does not always have direct implications towards understanding the underlying neurophysiological processes. Previous work has shown elements of connection between neuronal structures and coherent activity, however not in a consistent way. In this paper, simulations of simple neuronal networks appearing in the literature and the resulting cumulant plots will be combined with a consistent simulation study that aims to recreate some of the presented results and generate some new in order to give insight to the interpretation of the cumulant analysis results and frequency domain results. The aim is to help towards understanding the cumulant analysis and frequency domain results. Neurones receiving a common excitatory input, neurones receiving a common inhibitory input, neurones having common oscillatory inputs and neurones with non oscillatory inputs producing oscillatory output were examined regarding the coherence and frequency spectra results.