Membrane potential and response properties of populations of cortical neurons in the high conductance state

Because of intense synaptic activity, cortical neurons are in a high conductance state. We show that this state has important consequences on the properties of a population of independent model neurons with conductance-based synapses. Using an adiabaticlike approximation we study both the membrane potential and the firing probability distributions across the population. We find that the latter is bimodal in such a way that at any particular moment some neurons are inactive while others are active. The population rate and the response variability are also characterized.