ArticleNature neuroscience2011
Ephaptic coupling of cortical neurons.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 275 papers.
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Who cites it
275 citing papers in PubMed, 631 citations in OpenAlex.
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- The wave-coded brain: transforming spike patterns through space-time dynamics.Biological cybernetics · 2026Article
- Acute ethanol enhances septohippocampal coordination but disrupts intrinsic hippocampal theta dynamics during foraging.Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Coordination of spike timing among the neurons of the cerebellum.Research square · 2026Article
- Beyond scaling: how brains reorganize to support higher intelligence.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2026Article
- Regular afferent activity and structural homogeneity gate ephaptic synchronization in the dorsal column.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- A bioelectromagnetic hypothesis of chronic primary pain: from thalamocortical dysrhythmia to the consciousness-brain interface.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Extracellular stimulation and ephaptic coupling of neurons in a fully coupled finite element-based Extracellular-Membrane-Intracellular (EMI) model.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Microscale maps of bursting dynamics across human hippocampal slices from patients with epilepsy.Journal of neurophysiology · 2026Article
- Raslan Circuit: von Economo neurons as biological dipole antenna elements in a proposed FI-ACC communication pathway for multimodal integration and conscious access.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2026Article
- Resonant hierarchies: a multiscale framework for oscillatory dynamics in the brain.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Beyond representations: from active inference to active interference.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
215 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The electrochemical processes that underlie neural function manifest themselves in ceaseless spatiotemporal field fluctuations. However, extracellular fields feed back onto the electric potential across the neuronal membrane via ephaptic coupling, independent of synapses. The extent to which such ephaptic coupling alters the functioning of neurons under physiological conditions remains unclear. To address this question, we stimulated and recorded from rat cortical pyramidal neurons in slices with a 12-electrode setup. We found that extracellular fields induced ephaptically mediated changes in the somatic membrane potential that were less than 0.5 mV under subthreshold conditions. Despite their small size, these fields could strongly entrain action potentials, particularly for slow (<8 Hz) fluctuations of the extracellular field. Finally, we simultaneously measured from up to four patched neurons located proximally to each other. Our findings indicate that endogenous brain activity can causally affect neural function through field effects under physiological conditions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.