Neurons in the supragranular layers of the somatosensory cortex integrate sensory (bottom-up) and cognitive/perceptual (top-down) information as they orchestrate communication across cortical columns. It has been inferred, based on intracellular recordings from juvenile animals, that supragranular neurons are electrically mature by the fourth postnatal week. However, the dynamics of the neuronal integration in the adulthood is largely unknown. Electrophysiological characterization of the active properties of these neurons throughout adulthood will help to address the biophysical and computational principles of the neuronal integration. Here we provide a database of whole-cell intracellular recordings from 294 neurons located in the supragranular layers (L2/3) of the primary somatosensory cortex in adult mice (9-45 weeks old) from both sexes (females, N=184; males, N=110). Data include 336 somatic current-clamp (CC) and 515 voltage-clamp (VC) experiments, recorded using a step-and-hold protocol (CC, N=236; VC, N=54), frozen noise injections (CC, N=100) and triangular voltage sweeps (VC, 10 (N=142), 50 (N=157) and 100 ms (N=162)), from regularly spiking (N=161) and fast-spiking neurons (N=78). The data could be used to systematically study the properties of somatic integration, and the principles of action potential generation across sexes and across electrically characterized neuronal classes in adulthood. Understanding the principles of the somatic transformation of postsynaptic potentials into action potentials will shed light onto the computational principles of intracellular information transfer in single neurons and information processing in neuronal networks, helping to recreate neuronal functions in artificial systems.

Keywords:

• whole-cell intracellular recordings
• somatic patch-clamp
• current-clamp
• voltage-clamp
• acute brain slices
• adult brain
• barrel cortex
• frozen noise
• big data

Read the peer-reviewed publication(s):

(PubMed: 30521020)