1Naval Surface Warfare Center, Silver Spring, Maryland 20903
2Department of Neurosurgery, Children's National Medical Center and The George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, D.C. 20010
3Program in Neuroscience, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052
4School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332
Received 24 June 1996
Stochastic resonance, a nonlinear phenomenon in which random noise optimizes a system's response to a signal, has been postulated to provide a role for noise in information processing in the brain. In these experiments, a time varying electric field was used to deliver both signal and noise directly to a network of neurons from mammalian brain. As the magnitude of the stochastic component of the field was increased, resonance was observed in the response of the neuronal network to a weak periodic signal. This is the first demonstration of stochastic resonance in neuronal networks from the brain.
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