  Striatal projection neurons form a sparsely-connected inhibitory network, and
this arrangement may be essential for the appropriate temporal organization of
behavior. Here we show that a simplified, sparse inhibitory network of
Leaky-Integrate-and-Fire neurons can reproduce some key features of striatal
population activity, as observed in brain slices [Carrillo-Reid et al., J.
Neurophysiology 99 (2008) 1435{1450]. In particular we develop a new metric to
determine the conditions under which sparse inhibitory networks form
anti-correlated cell assemblies with time-varying activity of individual cells.
We found that under these conditions the network displays an input-specific
sequence of cell assembly switching, that effectively discriminates similar
inputs. Our results support the proposal [Ponzi and Wickens, PLoS Comp Biol 9
(2013) e1002954] that GABAergic connections between striatal projection neurons
allow stimulus-selective, temporally-extended sequential activation of cell
assemblies. Furthermore, we help to show how altered intrastriatal GABAergic
signaling may produce aberrant network-level information processing in
disorders such as Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.
